
Holland, Edwin C. 

A Befutation of the calumnies circu- 
lated against the Southern and Wes^tern 
State* reepecting alarery. 1822, 



2*?fiK^ 




Class. 
Book. 



f 



r 



'I 



\ 



A REFUTATION 



OF 



^^r CailiiinitiriQi 



CIRCULATED AGAINST 



The SOITTUERK &: WESTERN* Stales. 



BESPECTING THE INSTITUTION ANO EXISTENCE 



^m ATS m^ 

AMONG THEM. 



TO WHICH IS ADDED, 

A MINUTE AND PARTICULAR ACCOUNT OP THE ACTUAl, STATE 
AND CONDITION OF THEIR 



Kcfftro }|o|3ttlatioiT» 



TOGETHER WITH 

HISTORICAL NOTICES OF ALL THE INSURRECTIONS 

THAT HAVE TAKEN PLACE SINCE THE SETTLEMENT OP 
THE COUNTRY. 



Facts oj-e stuhhorn t/iiiiiis. — Shakspeare. 



BY A SOUTH-CAROLINIAN, 



^- .t 



CHARLESTON: 

PRINTED 15V A. E. MILLER^ 

jNo. 4, Broail street. 

1822. 
L 



14159 




District of South-Carolina, to unt : 

40COd *> BE IT RKMEMBEnED, That on the twenty-ninth day of October, Anno Do. 
p () n>ini, one thousand ^■ii:ht huinlred and twenty-two, cinil in the foity-sixth year ot" 

f) SEAL. I) the Indi|iendence of (he United Slates of Americfl, Ed\^ in 0. Holland, Esq. de- 
C () posited in this oflice llietilh- of a book, the right whereof he claims as author 

%'>;?000 S> and proprietor, in tlie w ords followin(j, to wit : 

" A Refutation of the Calumnies rirrulated against the Southeni and Western States, respecting 
the institution and existence of Slavery ainonjj them. To which is added, a minute and 
pui tirular account of the actual slate and condition of llu-ir Nefjro Poi)ulation. TopfCther 
with Historical Notices of all the Insurrecticms that have taken place since the Settlement of 
lh>- 'Jo jntry. Facts are stubborn tilings.— SAa<:5;)cn»e. By a South-Carolinian." 

tn conformity with the act of Conpress of the I'nitrd States, entitled " An act for the 
Enronrj^r- nieni of /.earning, by srcurintj the Copies of maps, charls, and books, to the authors 
and priiprii'loiT. of such roiiicn, dtnini; llie limes therein mentioned," and also to the net entitled 
" An ml supplemenlnry l<i an aci, entitled, ' An act for the encourafrement of learninfj, by 
OH-urini; Ih.' copies of inai>^, charls and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, 
JurinK the times therein nieiitiinuiP, mid ext.iuline the benefits thereof to the arts of desiguiiig:, 
eopvvlnK aoU ctcUuig bisloricul and other prints. 

rifrk nf the District of f<ovih-Carolma. 



TO 
THE MEMBERS OF THE SENATE 

AND 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF 
SOUTH-CAROLINA, 

AND THE HONORABLE 

^^t ^txttHtKU Of m <Kit2 eouncil of etjarleston, 

THB FOLLOWING PAGES ARE VERY RESPECTFULLY 

DEDICATED 

BY THEIR PELLOW-CITIZEN, 

THE AUTHOR. 



/ 






iPSisii'A^a) 



A HE Author of the following discussion presents it to the Public 
with feelings of deep and solemn interest. However imperfectly 
his design may have been executed, the subject of his observations 
is of such momentous import as to arrest the attention of the most 
careless and indifferent. It tembraces, in its various aspects, ques- 
tions of the most profound and vital importance, affecting every one 
in all the different relations of life, and involving arguments and 
considerations that come home to the bosoms of all. He does not 
pretend to any thing very novel in his manner of treating the subject 
before him, as it has been, in a great measure, exhausted : But he 
hopes that many new and important facts, in relation to it, have 
been produced, which were not within the reach of ordinary industry, 
and for many of which he has been indebted to the kindness of some 
of the most intelligent members of the community. Several interest- 
ing public Documents, also, are, for the first time, published, which 
shed much light upon the Colonial History of the country, and pre- 
sent a faithful picture of the state of the Province at the different 
periods to which they respectively refer. He returns his sincere and 
unaffected thanks to those who have, incidentally, aided and assisted 
him in the collection of the materials necessary to have enabled him 
to proceed, and sobiaits t® the consideration of an enltghtene^l 



Vi PREFACE. 

Public, the result of a laborious and painful investigation. Tlie 
best of motives have actuated him, and his only object has been to 
combat errors wherever he has found them — to strangle the slanders 
that were wounding our reputation with a serpent tooth, and to 
place our character upon the elevated ground to which its honor 
and patriotism proudly entitle it. 



^ i: 



■ 



A 



&.C. 



A HE Northern and Eastern Sections of our 
Empire, to whose early and active participation in 
the Slave Trade is to be attributed, in a great mea- 
sure, the extension, if not the introduction of our 
Negro Slavery, are continually reproaching the 
people of the South and West with the existence of 
an evil, the barbarity of which they, at the same time, 
magnify with all the malignity of the most pertinaci- 
ous hostility. The peculiar moral and political con- 
dition of that class of our population, who are pictured 
by them as groaning under the oppression of the most 
odious and afflicting tyranny, appears to be as little 
understood as it has been frequently misrepresented. 
It would be a matter of some difficulty, perhaps, con- 
sidering our relative situation as members of the same 
great Republican family, were we not fully acquaint- 
ed with the motives of those who have so industrious- 
ly propagated the calumnies to which we have refer- 
red, to assign any competent reason for the devotional 
fidelity with which they have carried on their work of 






djefamatioii and slander. But the curtain is with- 
drawn, and the history of past events teaches us the 
philosophy of their conduct. The late discussions in 
Congress upon what has been popularly denominated 
the Missouri Question, have thrown so clear and 
distinct a light upon this subject, that no individual, 
who lays claim to a capacity of the most ordinary 
rectitude of observation, can mistake the true 
sources from which this current of feeling has pro- 
ceeded. In the history of the agitation of that mo- 
mentous question, involving, as it did, subjects of the 
most profound and afflictive concern, and which, 
but for the calm and temperate interposition of one of 
the most influential members on the floor of Congress, 
would have ended in shaking the Union to its centre, 
we have abundant testimony of the hostile and un- 
friendly spirit with which the most vital interests of 
the people of the South and West were canvassed and 
discussed. Bound together as we are by one golden 
chain of affinity, and exhibiting to the eye of the 
civilized world the subliuie and beautiful spectacle of 
an immense emj)ire, composed of different sovereign- 
ties, revolving hitherto, in perfect harmony under tlie 
controling power of a confederated Republican form 
of Government, it is deeply to be lauiented that so 
much bitterness of feeling shoeld have been engen- 
dered by the intemperate zeal of a few, or the profli- 
gate ambition of any. 

It must be conceded that the people of the South 
and West have certain established constitutional rights 
and privilege's contradistinguished, by their peculiar 
situation, from those of the North and East, the sur- 
render of which would be worse than the wildest 
ijisanity, and for the salV: enjoyment of which they 



jf^^*^-0^ 



must and will contend to the last. If they are to be 
sacrificed by a system of legislation that strikes at the 
root of all their interests, the safety of their lives and 
the prosperity of their fortunes, they will not be 
sacrificed without a struggle. There is a point, be- 
yond which, on the part of the non-slave-holding states, 
it will be the worst of insults to proceed, and at which, 
it will become the solemn and imperious duty of the 
slave-holding states, to resist. The Union to the latter, 
is not worth preserving, if they are to fall victims to 
such a policy, the outlines of which have already been 
developed by so bold a pencil. The stupendous and 
colossal power of the North and East, is gradually 
shadow ing that of the South and West, and it is time 
for us to take such a stand, as will preserve a proper 
equilibrium in our political relations to them, and 
secure to us, beyond the possibility of all future cavil- 
ling, the full and uncontrolled enjoyment of our 
rights. We deprecate, fiom the bottom of our hearts, 
any steps but those which are sanctioned and strength- 
ened by a sound, patriotic and enlightened policy, but, 
at the same time, we cordially recommend such a co- 
alition in the Representation of the South and West, 
in their places on the floor of Congress, as must effec- 
tually, in conjunction with other interests, defeat the 
flagitious and unholy ambition of those who would 
rise to power though the separation of the Union were 
to be their stepping stone. We are not conscious of 
having indulged a tone of feeling inconsistent with 
that which should, upon this subject, be felt deeply 
and strongly too; nor have we used any latitude of 
expression in our language, to which the conduct of 
those to whom it refers, is not, in every respect, obnox- 
ious. The speeches of many ©f the mest influenti^ 



# 



10 

members, both in the Senate, and in the House of 
Representatives in Congress, delivered, not in the 
heat of sudden excitement, but upon cool and delibe- 
rate reflection, breathe such a spirit of towering and 
unprincipled ambition, coupled with the most heart- 
less apathy upon the subject of our mut7ial interests, 
that they fully justify the most severe reprobation. 
Our children will read them with amazement, our 
friends with the deepest regret, and our enemies will 
dwell upon this dark page in the history of our coun- 
try with the liveliest satisfaction. 

It is, by no means difficult, we think, to trace the 
sources of the rise, or to point out the final object of 
the progress of such feelings. The Hartford Con- 
vention, that scorpion nest of sedition and intrigue; in 
which so many of the disturbed spirits of the Opposition 
exhibited such gigantic political effrontery, was, in all 
probabity, the origin of those profound and flagitious 
schemes, the true character and color of which have 
been since so thoroughly developed. It was within the 
circle of that association of powerful, though misguid- 
ed intellect, that the seeds of those feelings, of which 
we so justly complain, were first sown, and which 
have since gradually ripened into a bitterness of hos- 
tility as deep as it is lamentable. 

The people of the North and East, aie, or they 
affect to be, totally ignorant of our situation, and yet 
they insist upon legislating for us upon subjects, with a 
knowledge of which they appear to be wholly unac- 
quainted. This is neither fair, nor honorable, nor 
wise, nor prudent. It must be recollected, that every 
State is sovereign and independent within the circle of 
her own territory, and that her citizens have an indis- 
]Hitablc right to frame w hatcver laws their intelligence 



^. 



ii 

may deem necessary to its prosperity and happiness, 
provided they do not conflict with any of the great 
fundamental principles of the Federal Constitution. 
This proposition, so apparently self evident and just, 
is, nevertheless, in a manner, controverted, and thai 
too in an age when the principles of State Sovereignty 
have been as fully admitted as they have been freely 
discussed. The people of the North and East, w ill, 
nevertheless, take the liberty of interfering in the de- 
signing of some of our most important local regula- 
tions and of directing the steps of our constituted 
authorities. We are not only dictated to, but we are 
slandered in their public prints, denounced in their 
pulpits, and calumniated in pamphlets and orations. 
We are exposed to still greater perils, by the swarm 
of Missionaries, white and black, tlmt are perpetual- 
ly visiting us, who, with the Sacred Volume of God in 
one hand, breathing peace to the whole family of man, 
scatter, at the same time, with the other, the fire-brands 
ol discord and destruction, 3.nd secretly disperse among 
our Negro Pojiulation, the seeds of discontent and 
sedition. It is an acknowledged fact, that some of 
these religious itinerants, these apostolic vagabonds, 
after receiving die charities which the philanthropy 
and open-hearted generosity of our people have be- 
stowed, have, by the means of Tracts and other 
modes of instruction, all professedly religious in their 
character, excited among our iNegroes such a spirit ot 
dissatisfaction and revolt, as has, in the end, brought 
down upon them the vengeance of offended humani- 
ty, and given to the gallows and to exile, the deluded 
instigators of a most diabolical and unholy Insurrec- 
tion. Those who are intimately acquainted with the 
efficient causes of the late intended Insurrection in 



12 

Charleston and the districts adjoining, which, from 
the testimony as well of many of those who have been 
executed, as from that of the hundreds who either 
knew of or were engaged in the plot, was to have 
been conducted with a ferocious barbarity, at which 
humanity shudders and turns pale; those, we repeat, 
who are acquainted with the rise and progress of that 
nefarious plot, know how blasphemously the word of 
God was tortured, in order to sanction the unholy 
butchery that was contemplated, and what a powerful 
agency was put into operation by the dispersion 
among our Negroes, of reU8;ious magazines, news pa- 
per paragraphs and insulated texts of scripture; all 
throwing such a delusive light upon their condition as 
was calculated to bewilder and deceive, and finally, 
to precipitate them into ruin. Religion was stripped 
of her pure and spotless robe, and, panoplied like a 
fury, was made to fight under the banners of the most 
frightful Conspiracy that imagination can conceive, 
and her voice was heard instigating the midnight ruf- 
fian and coward, to creep silently to the pillow of his 
unsuspecting master, and at one " fell swoop" to mur- 
der him in the unconscious hour of sleep, prostitute 
the partner of his bosom, violate the child of his affec- 
tions, and dash out the brains of his innocent and 
unoffending infant. The measure of desolation was 
not even yet full ; after robbing our banks, and seizing 
on our shipping, killing all but the captains, \\ ho were 
to be reserved as pilots, their atrocious footsteps were 
to have been lighted from our shores by a general con- 
Jlagration, and our city, that proudly swells with life 
and with wealth, was to have been left an awful 
monument of the most ferocious guilt. Such are a 
few of the barbarities to which we would have been 



m 



<*^xposed had the late intended Insurrection b^en 
crowned with success. But the activity and intelli- 
gence of a wise and efficient police, strengthened and 
enlightened as they were by the protecting interposi- 
tion of a benificent Providence, have frustrated the 
wicked designs of our barbarous and inhuman ene- 
mies, and consigned to a bloody and ignominious fate 
the master spirits of the Revolt. Notwithstanding all 
these projected atrocities, however, and with a full 
knowledge of the facts upon the subject, we have, 
nevertheless, been vilified and abused for having visit- 
ed upon the heads of their stupid and flagitious insti- 
gators, the penalty which the Laws of our Country 
award, and which the vengeance of violated humanity 
required. We are sneeringly upbraided with a want 
of common justice in the framing, or a lamentable 
want of mercy in the execution of our laws. In 
many of the Northern and Eastern prints, there has 
been a great deal of that w hining, canting, sickly kind 
of humanity, which is as disgraceful to the character 
of those journals, as it is contemptible in the eyes of 
all intelligent and reflecting men. Instead of meeting 
as we expected, and had a right to expect, the cordial 
and unaifected sympathy of those who wear the livery 
of our own color, who are connected to us by all the 
endearing affections of political brotherliood, whose 
hearts ougiit to beat with our own and v\ hose hands 
ought to be the first to assist us in the hour of peril 
and of danger, we have too frequently encountered a 
heartless indifference or selfish apathy with respect to 
the horrors we have escaped, and what is still worse, 
the gibes and jeers of the idle and unfeeling, or the 
foul rebuke of the ^'•humane''' and the ^'religious.''' 
This then is the plain unvarnished statement of facti. 



. 14 

that, at a period of the deepest and most awful anxiety, 
when our whole community was thrown into the most 
-anxious and painful suspense: when the mother, petri- 
fied with fear, "strained her infant closer to her breast," 
and the listening father held his breath to catch the 
first notes of that tocsin that was to summon him to 
the defence of all that was dear to him in life, against 
a merciless and vindictiv e foe ; we have had our mo- 
lives misrepresented, our character defamed, and our 
laws ridiculed and reviled. If this be religion or hu- 
manity\ we must confess that we have learned the 
meaning of these two important terms from a nomen- 
clature widely different from those who have assigned 
to them a signification so directly the reverse of our 
own. 

We repeat, the people of the North and East are, or 
affect to be, totally ignorant of the actual state and 
character of our Negro Population; they represent 
the condition of their bondage as a perpetual revolu- 
tion of labor and severity, rendered still more deplo- 
raWe by an utter destitution of all the comforts of 
life. Our Negroes, according to these candid and accu- 
rate observers, are in every respect illy provided, 
badly fed and badly clothed ; worked beyond their |)hy- 
sical capacity while in health ; neglected while in 
i^ickness ; going always to their labor with the most 
dogged reluctance, confined to it by the severity of the 
cart-whip, and denied, in fine, all the ordinary enjoy- 
ments of existence. Now, the very reverse of this is 
the truth; and it is within the province of those who 
are continually defaming us, to ascertain it; yet, not- 
withstanding that the most abundant testimony is at 
hand to satisfy the most curious inquin r upon the 
subject, and evcj-y candid and enlightened observer 



^ 



15 

finds himself at every step furnished with the niost 
ample refutation of these charges, the calumny has 
nevertheless been industriously propagated and upheld 
with a malignity of design, and an utter contempt of 
truth, at war with every thing like fair argument, ur 
the most ordinary regard for our feelings. 

We are told by these enlightened and exclusive pa- 
triots and philanthropists that the odious state of bon- 
dage among us is a libel on the character of our 
country, the very Constitution of which, declares all 
men to be born equal ; that it lessens the reputation of 
the Repubhc in the eyes of the civilized world, renders 
us as a people less acceptable in those of Heaven, and 
that its abolition is necessary to the greater security 
and more perfect happiness of the Union ; as if we 
were the original introducers of this system, or even, 
now, had it in our power, to sweep away, at one effort, 
the accumulated evils that have been the growth of 
centuries, and which will take more than centuries to 
remove. 

These prefaratory remarks will not, we trust, be 
considered as injudiciously introduced, when it is 
recollected that the principle object of the following 
pages is to present a candid and dispassionate refuta- 
tion of these calumnies, and to develope, for the in- 
struction of our Northern and Eastern brethren, the 
actual state and condition of that class of our popula- 
tion, respecting whom so much "sentimental rant and 
sonorous philanthrophy" has been expended. In ad- 
dition to this, we shall offer some general remarks 
upon the policy of altering and amending some of our 
laws touching the subject before us, and making such 
other statutory provisions, in relation to our greater 



f 



16 

security, as will effectually save us from the dangeri? 
of a conspiracy at all times to ]ye apprehended. 

As it has become a matter of some curious inquiry, 
it may not be uninteresting, at this stage of our labor, 
to point out, in a brief and summary manner, the 
origin and progress of that odious and detestable 
commerce, by the introduction of which the civilized 
world has entailed upon itself so heavy and irrevoca- 
ble a curse: — From the earliest historical lights by 
which we are enabled to guide ourselves, it appears, 
that the Genoese were the first who commenced the 
traffic in human flesh. They derived their charter from 
Charles V, under which they enjoyed an exclu- 
sive patent of furnishing Negroes from the Portugese 
Settlements on the Coast of Africa, for " America and 
the West Indies." The eagle eyes of commercial 
avarice in England, ever on the watch, were no sooner 
directed to this new and fruitful source of national 
wealth, than the government followed with the most 
active steps, the example of their enterprising prede- 
cessors. Such was the unbounded spirit of conuner- 
cial speculation in this iniquitous traffic, that in a few 
years ^fter its first exploration, millions were invested 
in its prosecution, and the shores of Africa were 
crowded with the sails of the English shipping to the 
comparative exclusion of the flags of all other nations, 
England, at this period, began her monopoly in a 
Trade, that, while it enriched her cofferff, covered the 
glory of her history w ith disgrace. 

The first Englishmen who embarked in the Slave 
Trade, were Sir Lionel Ducket, Sir Thomas Lodge, 
and Sir William Winter, who, together with others, 
formed themselves into a Company, for the purpose of 
trading to the Coast of Africa. Subscriptions were 



17 

iaimediately after opened for the prosecution of what 
was representetJ an easy and certain source of vvf alth, 
and were, unhappily for the wretched race who 
were to be the subjects of the traihi, too promptly and 
rapi^Uy filled. Preparations were accordinj^ly made 
for an expedhion to the Coast; and in the year 1562, 
a fleet, consisting; of three ships, under the direction and 
command of John Hawklns, set sail for the Coast of 
Africa. These Ships were manned by one hundred 
^' select Seameti,^^ who were induced to visit these dis- 
tant and couiparatively unknown shores, by liberal 
promises of ^\good treatment, and great pay.^'' After 
a prosperous voyage of a iew weeks, they made the 
Coast of Sierra Leone, and Hawkins immediately 
commenced a conmierce with the natives. " While 
he trafficked with them," says Hewitt, in his valuable 
" History of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of 
South-Carolina and Georgia," " he found some means 
of giving them a charming description of the country 
to which he was bound. The unsuspicious Africans 
listened to him with apparent joy and satisfaction, and 
seemed remarkably fond of his Euroj)ean trinkets, 
food and clothes. He pointed out to them the barren- 
ness of their own country, and their naked and 
. wretched condition, and promised them, if any were 
weary of their miserable circumstances, and would go 
along with him, he would carry theui to a plentiful land, 
where they should live happy, and receive an abun- 
dant recompense for their labor. He told them, that 
the country was inhabited by such men as himself and 
his jovial companions, and assured them of kind 
usage and great friendship. In short, the Negroes 
were overcome by these flattering promises, and thre^ 
hundred stout fellows accepted his offer, and «on- 
S 



:^, 



X8 

seutcd to embark along with him. The night before 
his departure, however, his Negroes were attacked by 
a large body from a different quarter, and Hawkins, 
being alarmed by the shrieks and cries of dying per- 
sons, ordered liis men to the assistance of iiis slaves, 
and having surrounded the assailants, carried a num- 
ber of them on board, as j^mo/ie/.? of war. The next 
day he set sail for Hispaiiiola, but, during the passage, 
he treated his prisoners of war in a different manner 
from his volunteers. Upon his arrival he disposed of 
his cargo to great advantage, and endeavoured to 
inculcate on the Spaniards, who bought the Negroes, 
the same distinction he had observed; but they having 
purchased all at the same rate, considered them as 
slaves of the same condition, and consequently, treated 
them all alike." — Hawkins soon after returned to 
England, with a rich and valuable cargo, which he had 
obtained in exchange for his slaves. Great curiosity 
was excited by the novelty of his adventure, and 
among the more rigid, some scruples of conscience 
began to be entertained of the propriety and himianity 
of the trade. Elizabeth, during wjiose reign this ex- 
pedition had been fitted out, ordered Hawkins to 
appear before her, and interrogated him as to his mode 
of conducting it. He assured her that his motives were 
those of the most disinterested humanity, and promised 
his Royal Mistress, "that in no ex})cdition where hr 
had the command, should any Africans be carried away 
without their own free will and consent, except such 
capiives as were taken in war, and doomed to death; 
and that he had no scruples about the justice of bring- 
ing human creatures from that barren wilderness, to 
a condition where they might be both happy them- 
selves, and beneficial to the world." Elizabetht 



19 

expressed licrsclf perfectly satisfied witli the relation 
she had heard, and promised Hawkins her protection 
and assistance. Soon after this interview with the 
Queen, he projected a second voyage to the Coast, and 
she offered him the convoy of a man of war; but he 
declined the offer, alleging as a reason, that the pro* 
fits arising from the trade were amply sufficient to 
remunerate him for the dangers and expense which 
attended it. "Tn his passage, however," says the 
historian, to whom we have already referred, " he fell 
in with the Minion, man of war, which accompanied 
him to the Coast of Africa. After his arrival he began, 
as formerly, to traffic with the Negroes, endeavouring 
by persuasion and promises, and the prospects of 
reward, to induce them to go with him ; but now they 
were more reserved, and jealous of his designs, and 
as none of their neighbours had returned, they were 
apprehensive he had killed and ate them. The crew of 
the man of war, observing the Africans backward and 
suspicious, began to laugh at his gentle and dilatory 
method of proceeding, and proposed having recourse 
to force and comjiulsion; the sailors belonging to his 
own fleet joined those of the man of war, and applaud- 
ed tiie proposal. But Hawkins, considered it as ciuel 
and unjust, and tried by persuasion, promises and 
threats, to prevail on them, to desist, from a purpose, 
so unwan-antable and cruel, urging at the same time 
his authority, and instructions from the Queen. But 
the bold and headstrong sailors, would hear of no 
restraints ; they pursued their violent design, and 
after several unsuccessful attacks, in which many of 
them lost their lives, the carft'o was completed by force 
and barbarity." Thus ended an enterprise in which 
avarice, cl^-^'- - ""' e a saint, violated all the privileges 



to 

of liumanity, while a keen and cunning policy, oil the 
part of government, foreseeing the prodigious advan- 
tages that would necessarily arise from the prosecu- 
tion of the trade, cautiously winked at, and secretly 
encouraged it. Hawkins, notwithstanding the elabo- 
rate effort of Hewitt to vindicate his motives, must 
stand adjudged in the eyes of the civilized world, a 
prolound and impious hypocrite, and Elizabeth, the 
secret protector of a schetne of conunercial barbarity, 
that must forever tarnish the glory of her reign. As 
a proof of the sincerity of both parties, we find 
Hawkins, upon his return to England from his second 
voyage, knighted by Elizabeth, and made Treasurer of 
the Navy; and in less than a twelve month after, he 
was appointed to the command of a man of war, 
which, with three other vessels of a lesser class, set 
sail for the Coast, on the same " iraf/m«- expedition." 
Whatever may have been the motives of the one, how- 
ever, who undertook the prosecution of this newly 
discovered commerce, or of the other, who, by a 
refined and deep-sighted policy, protected and encour- 
aged it ; both arc equally guilty of having paved the 
way to the violence, barl)arity, and bloodshed, that 
have stained the subsequent history of the Slave 
Trade. 

When once the spirit of commercial avarice had 
been excited in England, there were no bounds to its 
voracious appetite. Justice was deaf and conscience 
itself was dumb. Private adventures nmltiplied and 
Africa swarmed witli the thousands who were now 
engaged in the trade. In little more than twenty years 
from the date of Hawkins' first voyage to the Coast, 
it became so profitable a source of vv<^alth, that the 
government no longer preserved the cautious attitudti 



■,";^saB5«=4,lWM , '^■^'P'"^. ,'l':-.."'"/'V 



21 

it had hitherto assumed, but throwing off the mask, 
openly, by Patents from the Crown, sanctioned and 
encouraged it. In 1585 and 1588, two several Pa- 
tents were granted to "certain rich merchants in 
London," to trade to the Coast of Guinea, within 
certain Latitudes. In 1 592, a third Patent was granted 
to the same Company, greatly extending tlieir privi- 
leges, and ealarging the territory of their trade. The 
Company, however, either from want of funds, igno- 
rance of the mode of conducting the trade, or an expira- 
tion of titeir charter, became extinct, and the trade w as 
in a great measure abandoned. It was revived and 
prosecuted with renewed activity in the reign of 
Janies I. In 1608, a Patent was granted to another 
company of merchants, with an extensive right to the 
trade, and "of more validity and extent than any of 
the former grants." During the period of the Com- 
m(>n\\ ealth also, inl 65 1 , si uiilar privileges were granted 
to other merchants in London, but the unsettled state 
of tiie country, rendered the Patent of little or no 
advantage to them. The commerce fell into ruin, but 
was still |>rosecuted by some few private individuals. 

In 1662, under the reign of Charles II, another 
Company was erected into a corporation, by a Patent 
from the Crown, under the name of the "Royal Com- 
pany of England trading to Africa." The war which 
{Succeeded, with the Dutch, iuunediately after, utterly 
ruined the trade, and the Company surrendered their 
charter to the Crown, upon payment of a sum of money. 
The King immediately (1672) erected another corpo- 
ration under the name of the "Royal African Compa- 
ny." This Company continued to exist from this period 
with a continual enlargement of its privileges, until 
the final abolition of the Slave Trade in En-rjand, in 



n 

the year 1807. We think it unnecessary to jjroceed 
any farther in our account of the progress of this de- 
testable traffic. The Parliamentary History of the 
English Empire, since the year 1672, is so easy of 
access, that little or no difficulty can be encountered 
by those who are anxious to continue the chronolog}' 
of the Trade. Our object, so iar as it is connected 
with our general design, is sufticiently obtained by 
the abstract we have already given. 

If then, we are unhappily afllicted with an evil, the 
curse of which is felt and acknowledged by every 
enlightened man in the Slave-holding States, it should 
be a matter of sympathy, rather than of rebuke, 
particularly when it is recollected that it was not of our 
own creation. It must be conceded by every fair and 
candid reasoner, who is at all acquainted with the 
liistory of our country, that the introduction of this 
njischievous and unhappy institution is not imputable 
to the present generation, nor are we answerable either 
to heaven, or to earth, for its existence. "Slavery" 
said Mr. King (ami dcs noirs) "unha})pily exists in the 
United States; enlightened men in the States, even 
where it is permitted, and every where out of them, 
regret its existence ■amon<( us, and seek for the means of 
mitigating it. The first introduction of Slaves is not 
imputable to tlie present generation, nor to their ances- 
tors. Before the year 1G42, the trade and ports of the 
Colonies were o])en to foreigners, equally as those of 
the mother country, and as early as the year 1620, a 
few years after |)lanting the Colony of V irginia, and 
the same in which the first settlement was made in the 
old Colony of riyniouth, a cargo of Negroes was 
brought into and sold as slaves, in Virginia, by a 
foreign s\i\p\ ivoin this beginning the importation was 



23 

continued for nearly two centuries. To her honor , 
Virginia, while a Colony, opposed the importation of 
slaves, and was the first State to prohibit the same by 
a law passed for this purpose in 1778, thirty yean^ 
before the general prohibition, enacted by Congress 
in 1808." Admitting, for a moment, however, that the 
existence of slavery among us was an institution of 
our own voluntary adoption, and not forced upon us, 
let us inquire how far the people of the South and 
West can be called to the bar of public opinion, by 
those of the North and East, and what proportion- 
ate or relative agency, each of these sections of our 
empire had, in the introduction of the very evil, of 
which both complain^ and to the dangers of which 
the former are most sensibly alive. 

The Northern and Eastern sections of our Union, 
then, in common with ourselves. Colonies of the Bri- 
tish Empire, were at a very early period, actively and 
industriously engaged in the very traffic to which is to 
be attributed the introduction and existence of the sin 
of which they have since so loudly and clamorously 
complained. The "atrocious crime" of slavery among 
us as a people, of which, their own agency was, in a 
great degree, the proximate cause, ought, in strict jus- 
tice, therefore to be attributed to them, or, as will be 
shown, is less imj)utable to us. Great Britain, and the 
then Northern and Eastern Colonies of her American 
possessions, were the first dealers in the odious and re- 
proachful commerce that has entailed upon our coun- 
try, the evil which we all lament, and if the latter made 
any early or obviously direct efforts, to abolish the 
trade, it was not so much from any " compunctious 
visitings" of conscience, or from any more enlightened 
feelings of philanthropy, as from the opcratioji of the 



24 

acts of the British Parliament, which, from time to time 
granted peculiar and exclusive privileges to British 
merchants, that amounted to a virtual prohibition, and 
debarred her Colonies from any participation in the 
trade. When the latter found that they were to be 
inundated by a class of people, from the introduction 
of which, they no longer were to derive the commer- 
cial advantages they had hitherto possessed, exertions 
were then made to abolish the traffic, or to lay it under 
heavy imposts. It was not until the period to which 
we have referred, that any very serious disposition was 
shown by them to interrupt the stream of wealth that 
poured its riches into their laps, or to divert it from the 
channels in which it had hitherto flowed. The history 
of the times is emphatic upon this point. The first ex- 
pression of the Legislation in the then North-American 
Colonies which took place upon this subject, was that 
of the " General Court of Massachusetts," in 1645, in 
whicli they prohibited the buying and selling of slaves, 
"except those who were condemned to servitude by 
tho sentence of a court of justice, or those who were 
taken in time of wary In 170,^, more than half a 
century after the ({ualified provisions of the act which 
we have just quoted, another ctTort was made to 
restrict the importation of slaves, by subjecting it to 
a heavy impost, ly/iic/t /ttiVed From the complexion 
of these historical documents, it would appear that it 
was from no very nice and scrupulous abhorrence of 
the "odious crime" of slavery, on the part of the 
Northern and Eastern Colonies, that they interdicted 
the trade in hmnan flesh, but a necessary result of ihe 
commercial avarice of the mother country, which 
closed the door of the trade upon her Colonies, and 
shut up the gates of its African commerce to all but 



25 

native born British merchants, and consequently 
destroyed all prospects of advantage on the part 
of the Colonies in this respect. It was not, then, so 
much the generous result of a more enlarged and en- 
lightened philanthropy on the part of these Colonies, as 
it was a calculating policy which dictated the steps 
that they took, in relation to tiie iuiportation of slaves. 
If it were not, why delay the expression of tlieir abhor- 
rence of what they deemed a curse and a scourge upon 
the country, from the year 1&45 to 1703, in the years 
intermediate between the two periods of which, the 
exclusive privile^jes to which we have referred were 
granted bv the crown ; or whv the distinction between 
the situation of the individual who may have been iairly 
purchased on the Coast of Africa, and brought into the 
country, and tliat of him who was taken prisoner iw 
lawful war, fighting boldly against the enemies of his 
race, and manfully exerting all the energies which God 
and nature gave him, to repel the notorious and unin- 
terrupted aggressions of the Colonists upon his liberty 
and life. The red man of the woods, who was the ori- 
ginal proprietor of the soil on which thoy had settled, if 
taken captive while resisting the encroachments of his 
more civilized and unwelcome neighbors, was declared 
to be n slave, and could be bought and sold as such, at 
the discretion or caprice of those into whose hands 
the fortune of war may have thrown him ; while the 
black man was no sooner landed on their shores, than 
he became invested with the privileges of a higher and 
more fortunate condition. And yet these Colonies 
now arrogate to themselves, the proud and peculiar 
distinction of having first interdicted the traffic in hu- 
man flesh, and of having, from the purest and most dis- 
interested humanity, first exhibited to the world tiie 
4' 



' 26 

b 

features of a system of legislation dignifud by all that 
can ennoble humanity. 

We claim, on tiie part of the Colonists of the South, 
no particular exemption from the charge of having 
participaied in this commerce and in the reception in 
common wiih the Northern and Eastern Provinces, of 
the slaves that were imported in British ships; but 
they are certainly enlitled to as nuich credit, on the 
score of hum-mity, as any portion of the Colonies, for 
the early and active exertions which were made to 
suppress the growth of an evil, the frightful character 
of which appeared so evideiit. Virginia began her 
system of legislation at a period almost at the same 
time with Massachusetts, and followed it up with the 
most unrelaxing assiduity. Long before the expira- 
tion of the seventeenth century, she had made great 
progress in restraining the importation of slaves into 
her territory, by laying such heavy imposts upon their 
introduction, as virtually amounted to a prohibition. 
No less than twenty-three Acts, imposing a duty of 
from five to ten, and finally to tiventij per cent, may be 
found in her statute book, from the year 1699 to 1772, 
" the real design of all of which was not revenue, but 
the repression of importation^ Brougham, in his 
" Colonial Policy," has a passage upon this subject, 
that places the character of Virginia in an elevated and 
distinguished point of view. 

" Every measure proposetl by the Colonial Legisla- 
tures that did not meet the entire concurrence of the 
British Cabinet, was sure to be rejected in the last 
instance by the crown. If examples were required, 
wc might refer to the history of the abolition of the 
slave trade in Virginia. A duty on the importation of 
negroes had been imposed amounting to a prohibition. 



27 

One Assembly, inducecl by a temporary peculiarity of 
cirrumstances, repealed this law by a bill which re- 
ceived ihe immediate sanction of the crown. But 
never afterwards could the Royal assent be obtained 
to a renewal of (he duty, although as we are told by 
Mr. JefKerson, all manner of expedients were tried for 
this purpose by almost every subsequent Legislature 
thf^t met under the Colonial Government. The very 
find Assembly that met mider the new Constitution 
finally prohibited the traflic." In 1772, very active 
exertions were made by Virginia to repress the trade. 
The "duties previously impos(.'d were re-enacted," and 
the Assembly,, at the same time, in a petition to the 
throne, " earnestly implore" the interposition of the 
croAvij, in checking the importation of slaves from the 
Coast of Africa, rejiresenting that " it had long been 
considered as a trade of great inhumanity^'''' tlie future 
progress and encouragement of which would, in the 
end, endanger the security and happiness of the Colo- 
ny. The language of the petition breathes a deep and 
emphatic tone of feeling upon the subject, that evident- 
ly demonstrates the sincerity with which it was pre- 
sented. The petition, however, was unattended to, 
and the Colony was still stocked by the mother coun- 
try, with a class of population, against the introduc- 
tion of which, it hud long previously declared its dis- 
gust and abhorrence. " That the inclination (says 
Mr. Walsh, in his " Appeal" from tiie Judgments of 
Great Britain, respecting the United States) to im- 
pose the yoke of perpetual bondage on any part of 
their fellow creatures if it ever existed ^mo\\^t\\Q. majo- 
rity of the Virginia planters soon subsided, is manifest 
from an Act which is traced to 1662, declaring that 
" no Englishmattj trader, or other, who should bring 



in any Indians as servants, and assign tlietn over to 
any other, should sell them for slaves, nor for any other 
time than English of like age, could serve by x\ct of 
Assembly." Thus early was tfip state of slavery prohibi- 
ted, where it was not exacted by the higher authority ; 
and the first opportunity was taken after the Declara- 
tion of Independence, to extinguish the detestable com- 
merce so long forced upon the Province. In October 
1778, during the tumult and anxiety of revolution, the 
General Assembly passed a Law, prohibiting, under 
heavy penalties, the further importation of slaves, and 
declaring that every slave imported thereafter, should 
be inmiediately free. The example of Virginia was 
followed at different times before the date of the Fede- 
ral Constitution by most of the other States." These 
historical facts, added to others that we shall produce, 
furnish the most abundant and unequivocal testimony 
of the early and sincere desire on the part of the 
Southern States to repress a traffic, to the dangers and 
inhumanity of which they were most sensibly alive. 
There is another valuable piece of Colonial history 
that gives additional weight to the argument. In the 
year 1711, Governor Gibbes, in his speech to the As- 
sembly of the State of South-Carolina, after represent- 
ing the flourishing condition of the Province, and its 
general happiness and prosperity, recommends to the 
serious and solemn consideration of the Assembly the 
necessity of interdicting the importation of slaves, and 
deprecates in the most emj)hatic manner, the further 
introduction of them. The following is an extract 
from his Speech, 15th May 1711. We give it with all 
the raciness of its ancient phraseology. 

" And, Gentlemen, I desire you will consider the 
' great quantities of negroes that are dayly brought into^ 



* this government, and the small number of whites that 

* comes amongst us, and how many are lately dead and 
' gon o(T. How insolent and mischeivous the negroes 

* are become, and to consider the Negro Act already 
' made, doth not reach up to some of the crimes they 
< have lately been guilty off; therefore it might be con- 
' venient by sotne additional clause of said Negro Act 
' to appoint either by gibbets, or some such like way^ 
' that, after executed, they may remain more exem- 
' plary, than any punishment hitherto hath been in- 

* Aided on them ; and also that masters of negroes, 
' may be obliged to provide and allow their negroes 
' sufficient dyet and cloathing, and that their worke 
' and correction may be with moderation, that they 
' may be comfortable, which may the better encour- 
' age them to live peaceably and honestly with their 

* masters." We shall make further use of this docu- 
ment in a subsequent stage of our proceedings. In 
the mean time, however, we would remark, that 
from the testimony we have already produced, it is 
abundantly clear that the Colonies of the South were 
as eager as those of the North to suppress an evil of 
the enormity of which both were equally convinced, 
and to the dangers of which the former were more 
intimately exposed. While we appeal to the records 
of the several States, we would point also to the 
journals of Congress, to show, that the earliest oppor- 
tunities were warmly embraced by the people of the 
South, to express their abhorrence of this odious 
trafKic. "In truth," says Mr. Walsh in the work 
which we have already quoted, " the Representatives 
from our Southern States, have been foremost in tes- 
tifying their abhorrence of the traffic ; an abhorrence, 
springing from a deep sense, not merely, of it^ inlqui- 



30 

ty, but of the magnitude of the evil it has entailed 
upon their country. It was only at the last session of 
Congress, (1819) that a rue mber from Virginia pro- 
posed the following regulation, to which the House of 
Representatives agreed, Avithout a division." 

"Every person, who shall imj)ort into the United 
Slates, or, knowingly, aid or abet the importation, 
into the United States, of any African Negro, or other 
person, with intent to sell or use such ISegro, or other 
person, as a slave, or shall purchase any such slave, 
knowing him or her to be thus imported, shall, on 
conviction thereof, hi any Circuit Court of the United 
States, be jmnished with deata.^'' 

Abundant testimony, then, we think, can be col- 
lected from the statements we have produced, that the 
Colonies at the South were at as early a period as 
those of the North, efficieiuly and actively engaged in 
legislating upon the introduction of Negro Slaves, 
and that since the Declaration of Independence, they 
have manifested the same disposition. They are, 
therefore, entitled to the same credit on the score of 
humanity. 

We have now arrived at the period of the De- 
claration of Inde})endence. Let us look into the 
history of the times, and observe the comparative 
agency of the different sections of the Union in the 
importation of slaves since the year 1 776. In the year 
1803, the State of South-Carolina opened her ports 
to the reception of slaves from the Coast of Africa, 
agreeably to the provisio-is of the Constitution of tiic 
United States. In 1!){>.3, one of her members on tlie 
floor of Congress, submitted a resohuion, censuring 
her conduct in thus throwing open her ports and 
inviting the in){)orlation of African Slaves into her 



31 

Temtory; and, but for the interposition ol' Congresi? 
that repealed the Act of 1804, which prohibited the 
introduction of slaves into the Territory of Louisiana, 
by an Act at the succeeding session of 1805, the 
ports of the Southern States would have been closed 
against the trade. This repeal was effected by the 
influence of the Northern and Eastern States, who, 
while (hey affected to denounce the "inhumanity" of 
the trade, entered fidly into it, and shared, from their 
immense amount of tonnage afloat, almost exclusively 
the profits of it. Possessing, as they did, so decided 
an advantage in the shipping interest, they became, 
in conjunction with foreigners, the carrit^-s for the 
world, and stocked the Southern sections of the Union 
with a class of population, of the existence of which 
they now so unjustly complain. After they had n ap- 
ed the profits of the trade from the year 1805 to the 
year 1807, when it was interdicted, it was then, and 
not until then, that the "odiousness" of it became 
so obnoxious to the "humanity" of the North and 
East, and that they began the cry against it. Unable 
any longer from the prohibitory statutes of the Gene- 
ral Government to import, and having effected a sale 
of those they had already imported, they then became 
very fastidious, and their ^'•consciences,'''^ very conveni- 
ently, took the alarm. All the opprobrium, therefore, 
"that they have heaped upon us, niijst be returned dou- 
ble fold on the heads of our calumniators. They were 
unquestionably the most active in the traffic. Mr. 
Smith, a senator from this State, in the Congress 
of the United States, demonstrates in the most lumi- 
nous manner the inferences drawn from diis view of 
our subject. His speech upon the " Missouri Question," 
in the year 1820, is too valuable to pass unnoticed-— it 



presents the best coup d^ailoi' the nature of the " Ques- 
tion*' that we remember to have seen. 

" About the 20th December 1803, the Legislature of 
the State of Soutli-Carolina, passed a law to open the 
African Slave Trade under the authority of the provi- 
sions of the Constitution of the United States. About 
three months after Congress passed the law of 1804, 
and immediately adjourned. This was a time that every 
thing was to bend to the Tonnage of the United States, 
and at the next session the Congress repealed this law 
(of 1804,) and the ordinance (of 1787,) and opeiied 
the ports of Louisiana, and our Eastern friiMids emj>loy- 
ed, immediately, a large portion of their shipj)ingin the 
trade. Carolina had no ships of consequence, but an 
am{)le supply came from the North and East. Rhode- 
Island furnished her full share; they sent there (to 
Carolina,) ships from Philadelphia, and they were 
oblii^ino- enough to send some froui Boston. 1 his 
was the ground upon which Congress thought proper 
to repeal the law of 1804, and that part of the ordinance 
of 1787, at so early a period. This repeal too, must 
have been effected by the Eastern members. He knew 
that the members from South-Cauolina ivere cdl op- 
posed to the Slave Trade. One honorable mrmber 
from that State, the same session, (1805) offered a re- 
solution, in the Congress, concerning the Legislature 
of Soutli-Carolina for opening her ports, which was 
not acted upon, i^ut for this repeal of the Law of 1 804, 
by Congress, the ports of South-Carolina would have 
been shut the next session of her Legislature. These 
ships cleared out from Charleston. That was neces- 
sary, because the ports in the other States were not 
o))en ior this trade. The Northern slave traders, and 
the British, carried the business on with a high hand. 



S3 

The profits of one man in Charleston, an agent for 
British merchants engaged in the traffic, were esti- 
mated at $300,000, as commissions, besides others 
engaged in the same line. All these vessels were 
obliged to enter a South-Carolina port, but many of 
them immediately re-shipped tiie slaves to Louisiana. 
As soon as tJiis trade was cut off, by the Act of Congress 
of 1807, the sinfulness of it presented itself in glaring 
colors, both to our Eastern brethren, and the Bri- 
tish. They can ship no more publicly, and the North- 
ern and Eastern States had done selling those already 
in tlieir possession, and then the scheme for emancipa- 
tion commenced. Tiie cry agaiust this sinful practice 
comes with an ill grace from that quarter." 

Again. — Let us see who, of the two parties at issue 
upon this question, has exhibited the most prompt and 
active disposition to put a final stop to the Slave Trade. 
In the year 1818, a Committee, consisting of i/iree 
^members frosn the slave-holding, and two from the 
non-slave-holding States, were appointed by a resolu- 
tion of Congress to suggest the most feasible and effi- 
cient mode of preventing the smuggling of slaves into 
the United States, which, in defiance of the existing 
laws, was carried on to the confusion both of the cha- 
racter and revenue of the country. The members 
of the Committee from the slave-holding States repre- 
sented the necessity of laying the axe to the root of the 
evil and by one etfcctive blow to cut it up altogether. 
They proposed to make the penalty a capital one, 
death. Those from the non-slave-holding States, how- 
ever, " were willing to cornpromise the sin for fine 
and imprisonment," and the Eastern members, more 
particularly those of the Senate, were o|)posed to any- 
thing even like " corporal punishment" Here " says 



A 



34 

Mr. Smith " it ended, and their ships are yet (1820) 
engaged in carrying slaves under every flag and for' 
every nation that indulges the trade." Similar efforts 
were again made in the last Session of the Congress 
of the year 1820, by a member from Louisiana, one of 
the slave-holding States, to repress the traffic, by com- 
pelling the captors of all ships trading to the Coast of 
Africa, and having slaves on board, to carry the ship 
and cargo to the port to which they belonged. But 
the Northern and Eastern portions of the Union saw 
at once the effect of such a bill, if passed into a law, 
and their " interests^'' overcame their " consciences.'^'^ 
The bill, together with the amendments that had been 
proposed, more effectually to secure the Government 
from the peculation of those who were secretly violat- 
ing its laws of revenue, as well as of humanity, was 
opposed by a member from the State of New-York, a 
non-slave-holding State. The measures proposed by 
this bill, would have instantly disclosed who were and 
who were not clandestinely engaged in the trade that 
had been inhibited by Government, but which was 
manifestly still carried on to a great extent by citizens 
of the United States, under the cover of other flags. 
The opponents of the Bill knew what would be the 
result of the disclosure contemplated by it, and inge- 
niously avoided it. A spirit of humanity so convenient 
as this, is at least somewhat doubtful in its character. 
The following valuable tables taken from the Speech of 
Mr. Smith of South- Carolina, upon the occasion refer- 
red to, exhibit at one glance a clear and comprehensive 
view of the relative agency exercised by the difl'erent 
States of the Union, in the importation of slaves from 
(he Coast of Africa. 



35 

'»' Recapitulation of the African Trade, and hy what Nations 5?<p* 
ported, from 1st January, 1804, to 1st December, 1807. 



13 
88 
9] 
10 

Total, 202 

The following paper contains the whole number of slaves imported, 
and the particular nun)ber imported by each foreign nation, and each 
of the United States. — It is in words and figures, thus : 

Slaves imported at Charleston, from 1st January, 1S04, to S\ si 
December, 1 807, and by tchat nation : 



V^essels belong 


ing 


to— 






Charleston, 


- 


. 


. 


61 


Consignees, natives of 


Rhode-Island, 


- 


- 


- 


59 


Charleston, 


Biiltiniore, 


- 


- 


. 


4 


Consignees, natives of 


Boston, - 


- 


. 


. 


1 


Rhode-Island, 


Norfolk, - 


- 


. 


- 


2 


Consignees, natives of 


Connecticut, 


- 


^ 


. 


1 


Britain, 


Sweden, - 


- 


- 


- 


1 


Consignees, natives of 


British, - 


- 


- 


. 


70 


France, 


French, - 


- 


- 


>■ 


3 





British, .... 19,949 
French, ... - i,078 



-21,027 



In American Vessels. 

Charleston, (S. C.) 7,723 

Of this number there were ) r ~,^ «; ri"!" 

belonging to foreigners, C ^' ' ' 



26,744 



Leaving, imported by merchants ^ 

and planters of Charleston > 2,006 

and its vicinity, ^ 

Bristol, 3,914 "^ p. . 

Newport, 3,488 Sf,,^' 7,95§ 

D -A Kcr V Island, ' 
rrovidenee, 55o ) ' 

Baltimore, - - - - 750 

Savannah, - . _ _ 300 

Norfolk, - . - . 287 

Warren, - - - - 280 

Hartford, - . . . 250 

Boston, - . - _ 200 

Philadelphia, - - - 200 

New-Orleans, - - - 100 



-12,331 

39,07r> 



••^«^^ 



36 

Here ends the black catalojrue. — It would show to the Senate that 
those peujile who most deprecate the evils of slavery and traffic in 
hiiinan llesh, when n projitahle market can be found, can sell human 
flesh with as easy a conscience as they sell other articles. The 
whole number imported by the merchants and planters of Charleston 
and its vicinity was only two thousand and six. Nor were the slaves 
imported by the foreiijners and other American vessels and owners, 
sold to the Carolinians, only in a small part. They were sold to the 
p(;ople of the Western States, Georgia, New-Orleans, and a considera- 
ble quantity were sent to the West Indies — especially when the 
market became dull in Carolina." 

Thus it would appear to every candid and reverting 
mind, that the Southern and Western States, having 
but little shipping, were manifestly unable to compete 
with their Noi'thern and Eastern brethren in the pro- 
secution of the Slave Trade, and the latter indulged 
in it with an extravagance that has no parallel in the 
history of our country. Let them do us common 
justice, therefore, and we are willing to sliare the 
odium, if any there be, equally even with themselves^ 
they should be the last to upbraid us when we can 
point to cases of clandestine commerce with Afiica, 
on their part, long after the abolition of the Trade. The 
Science, the Endymion and the Plattsburgh, all of 
them fitted out at New- York, were taken possession 
of by the proper authorities of the United States in 
the year 1820, for a violation of their laws in this res- 
pect. 

We have other causes of complaint. The Northern 
and Eastern sections of our Union have waged a 
perpetual and incessant war against the interests of 
the Southern and Western States; and, since our Con- 
federacy, have by means direct and indirect, public 
and private, carried on a system of Legislation wholly 
destructive of our safety and prosperity. Under the 
mask of religion and humanity, of liberty and philan- 
thropy, they have, within a few years past, assumeij 



an attitude in relation to us, that, if persisted in, must 
eventually drive us into measures that will necessarily 
result in a separation of the Union. Such ruinous 
encroachments have already been made, that we 
tremble for the security of our Confederacy. " Great- 
Britain," says Mr. Pinckney, of South-Carolina, in his 
place on the floor of Congress, '"in the heat of the Re- 
volutionary War, and when all her passions were rous- 
ed by hatred and revenge to the highest pitch, never 
ventured to inflict uj^on them such measures as they'* 
(the North and East) " are preparing for them" (the 
people of the South and West.) The Southern and 
Western States are too deeply interested in this course 
of })olicy to remain passive spectators of the scene. 
They fe(>l that a bold and determined attack has been 
made upon their dearest rijihts, which, " if sucess- 
ful, nmst convince them that the Northern and Eas- 
tern States are their greatest enemies^ Melancholy as 
this inference may be, it is not the less true. 

Notwidistanding their boasted and ostentatious dis- 
play of iiunjaniiy, however, the true causes of all the 
clamor upon the part of the Northern and Eastern 
States upon the subject of slavery, can be referred to 
no other definite feeling than a desire to wrest from 
the Southern and Western States the ascendency that 
their wealth and talents have given them in the coun- 
cils of the nation ; and, by diminishing their representa- 
tion, to secure to themselves the w hole management of 
the affairs of Government. They complain that they 
are not equally represented with ourselves in Congress, 
and have insultingly arrogated to themselves, during 
the debate on the " Missouri Question," the right of 
cutting down, in future, any increase in the prospective 
representation of the South and West, because they 



'^'^^ 



38 

consider the " great concession" which they made 
at the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, 
in allowing the slave-holding States to be represented 
in the proportion of three-fifths of the number of their 
slaves, as one that has put us under an obligation of 
gratitude that can never be cancelled on our own parts, 
or too deeply regretted by themselves. They repre- 
sent this " concession" as a sacrifice by them to the 
affection which they had for the Union of the States, 
and their patriotic desire to preserve it from dissolu- 
tion. This is a gross and manifest error. The histo- 
i-y of that period presents us with a picture directly 
the reverse. Anterior to, and during the period of our 
Revolutionary War, all the States, indiscriminately, 
were in possession of slaves whose treatment and situ- 
ation in every respect were precisely the same. In 
the Southern and Middle States, it is true, they were 
more numerous than in those of the Northern and 
Eastern, but the latter, nevertheless, had nuuibers of 
them. At the time of the adoption of the Federal 
Constitution, the Northern and Eastern States, uho 
then exhibited a sickly humanity on the introductiim 
of the word SUive in the articles of Confederation, pro- 
posed, at their own instance, that the apportionment 
of taxation by the general Government should be 
graduated by the value of /«/i(/.s and their improvements. 
Ever alive, however, to their own interests, they soon 
discovered that they had surrendered too much to 
their " qualms of conscience" upon this subject, and 
histantiy, at their own suggestion, substituted a reso- 
lution apportioning the aniount of taxation by the 
numlicr of inhabitants in each State, including ail the 
ivhites and three-fifths of the black population. As a 
proof that the non-slavc-holdin§^ States are not entitled 



^^^' .-o»*iMl**^^ 



39 

tp the slightest degree of credit for what they have 
falsely termed a " sacrifice" in this particular we have 
only to refer to the annual reports of the Secretary of 
the Treasury. These documents will demonstrate at 
a single glance, that the Southern and Western States 
have, by this very " concession" on the part of the 
Northern and Eastern States, deprived themselves of 
a quota of representation to which they are legiti- 
mately, and by all the axioms of political economy^ 
strictly entitled. The former pay a greater amount 
of taxes to the support of the General Government, and 
in fact, furnish nearly double of its annual revenue 
in comparison with the Northern and Eastern States; 
and this difference is created in a great measure by 
the value of the labor of our slaves. We will take the 
year 1820, when the " Missouri Question" was under- 
going a full and fatal discussion. In that year, from 
a report of the Secretary, the exports from the States 
north of Pennsylvania, inclusive, were only about 
eighteen millions, while those of the States south of 
Pennsylvania exceeded thirty-two millions, enahVmg the 
latter to import double the value of foreign commodi- 
ties necessary to our convenience or our luxury, and 
giving, of course, a double amount of revenue to the 
country. Thus, while the labor of our slaves is so 
materially efficient in the support of the Government, 
and the value of it is nearly double the amount 
of that of the inhabitants of the Northern and 
Eastern States, we are denied the liberty of 
being represented by but three fifths of that valuable 
class of our population, "while the whole of the 
comparatively unproductive inhabitants of the North- 
ern and Eastern States are fully represented," 
The jjiist and wholesome maxim, therefore, of the 



most profound and enlightened political economists^ 
that the representation of a State should be graduated 
and apportioned, not only by the number of its 
inhabitants, but, by the value of its products, and its 
direct agency in contributing to the revenue, is ren- 
dered, with regard to us, wholly nugatory ; and the 
Northern and Eastern States arc now in the full pos- 
session of an advantage that gives them greater 
strength on the floor of Congress than they are actu- 
ally entitled to. Their complaints, therefore, are as 
unfounded as they are unfair. The profligacy of 
unprincipled ambition may do a great deal, but we 
hope there is integrity and good sense enough in the 
country to detect and expose its Tarquin strides. 

With regard to the general question, as it respects 
the right that one body of men may have of holding 
another in a state of bondage and of exacting from 
them any given amount of involuntary service, we 
have only one or two remarks to make. Very emi- 
nent and enlightened men of all countries have differ- 
ed widely in their views of tiie subject. Certain 
it is, that we can trace the institution of slavery as far 
back as the existence of the world itself; not only 
jntliose dark and dismal ages of its infancy, when the 
lights of civilization giiunnered feebly through the 
gloom of barbarism and ignorance, but in those bright 
and sunny periods of its history when literature and 
science poured out their full radiance to enlighteu and 
liberalize the human nsind. During the Augustan 
age of Imperial Rome, this institution was always 
recognised and protected; and the Jews even, the 
chosen people of God, during their Theocracy^ wluni, 
according to the Holy Scriptures, tlie great Jehovah 
Vimself,reverentially be it spoken, directed and inform- 



41 

ed all their Councils, and inspired all their law givers 
and law makers, were expressly permitted the use of 
slavery, although they were restricted in its applica- 
tion to the services of any but the Heathen. The au- 
thorities upon the subject are numerous and were read 
by Mr. Smith in the Senate of the United States, in his 
Speech upon the "Bill for recovering fugitive slaves 
from labor." " We all know," said Mr. Smith, " that 
Ham sinned against his God and against his father, for 
which, Noah, the inspired jjatriarch, cursed Canan, 
the son of Ham, and said " a servant of servants shall he 
be unto his brethren.^^ Newton, who was perhaps as 
great a Divine as any in New-England, and as pro- 
found a scholar, in a book of great celebrity, called his 
Prophecies, in which he endeavors to prove the divini- 
ty of the bible, by the many prophecies that arc now 
fulfilling, says that this very African race are the des- 
cendants of Canan, and have been the slaves of various 
nations, and are still expiating, in bondage, the curse 
upon themselves and their progenitors. But it may 
be said that this is only an opinion of Mr. Newton, and 
that we can see no reason in it. If the gentleman was 
unwilling to believe Mr. Newton, he would surely 
believe Moses and the Prophets ; and if the Seriate 
would indulge him, he would show from the bible itself 
that slavery was permitted by divine authority, and for 
that purpose he would open the XXV chap, of Leviti- 
cus, and read as follows. " And the Lord spake unto 
Moses in Mount Sinai, and said, speak unto the chil- 
dren of Israel and say unto them &c. ('39.) If thy bro- 
ther that dwelleth by thee, be waxen poor, and sold 
unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a 
bond servant, (40) but as a hired servant and as a so- 

iourner he shall be with thee, and shall serve tbce 
6 



*'-* 



42 

until the year of Jubilee: (44) both thy bond-men and 
bond-maids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the hea- 
then that are round about you, of them shall ye buy 
bond-men and bond-maids. (46) Moreover, of the chil- 
dren of the strangers that do sojourn amongyou,of them 
shall ye buy and of their families that are with you, 
which they begat in your land and they shall be your 
possession, (46) and ye shall take them as an inheritance 
for your children, after you to inherit them for a posses- 
sion ; they shall be your bond-men j^br et^er." This, 
Mr. President, is the word of God, as given to us in 
the holy bible, delivered by the Lord himself to his 
chosen servant, Moses. It might be hoped this would 
satisfy the scruples of all who believe in the divinity of 
the bible, as the Honorable gentleman from New- 
Hampshire (Mr. Morrill) certainly does, as he has re- 
ferred to that sacred volume for his creed. It might 
satisfy the scruples of Mr. Kenric,* and the Divines 
who appear to be so shocked at seeing a father dispose 
of his slaves to his children by his last will and testa- 
ment; as they will perceive the scriptures direct them 
to go as an inheritance. The Honorable gentlenian 
says he speaks not only his own, but the universal senti- 
ments of all those he rejjresents. If he and his friends 
of New-Hampshire have not turned aside after 
strange gods, it is hoped the authority I havfe quoted 
might satisfy them." 

As to the particular question in relation to the 
convenience of the slave-holding States, it is much 
more easily decided than our opponents have been 
willing to admit. It is no longer a subject of 
problematical inquiry, whether the tvhite population of 

* The aullior of an inflammatory pamplilet cntitled'the " Horrors of Slavery?" 
anJ laid u|ion {he desk of each Senator dining the discu'^sion of tlio Bill. 



\ 



43 

the Southern States, more especially South-Carolina 
and Georgia, are capable, from their local situation 
and climate, and perhaps we might add to this, some 
peculiarity in their constitutional economy, of cultivat- 
ing the soil upon which they live. The climate, in the 
first place, is inconceivably hostile to the white con- 
stitution, and the experience of more than a century 
has shown that this opinion is a correct one. Those 
who know any thing of the geographical situation of 
these States, and of their general surface, know that 
the very portions, from the cultivation of which the 
Planter derives most of his wealth, present a succes- 
sion of deep flats and low bottoms, covered for the 
greater part of the year with extensive basins or 
reservoirs of stagnant water, which, under the influ- 
ence of a tropical sun, throw out nothing but pesti- 
lence and disease. In breathing this pestilential at- 
mosphere, the negro, whose constitution seems better 
adapted to it, subjects himself to the introduction of 
none of those fatal distempers, to which the white man 
falls a sure and certain victim. " He is more tolerant 
oj heat,^^ says Mr. Jefferson, "than the white man, 
because of his greater transpiration, and less so of 
cold. Perhaps too a difference of structure in the 
pulmonary apparatus, which a late ingenious experi- 
mentalist (Crawford) has discovered to be the principal 
regulator of animal heat, mav have disabled him from 
extricating in the act of inspiration, so much of that 
fluid from the outer air, or obliged him in expiration 
to part with more of it." Whatever physical or 
anatomical difiicult}^ however, there may be in ac- 
covmting for the aptitude of the one, or the inaptitude 
of the constitution of the other, to the climate, one fact 
is certain, that there is this difference between the two. 



*v 



44 

that the same season of \\\v year which carries on its 
wings the blessings of lirahh to the negro, gives an 
early warning to the Planter to quit his estates and 
flee from the destruction that awaits him. We need 
not advert but to one solitary instance of the tnith of 
this observation. It is well known to all who have 
ever been beyond the smoke of our city, that the 
poorer classes of our people, in those belts of land 
which are denominated the middle and low country, 
who are compelled to remain on their \ht\e farms, 
together with the Overseers, who, from duty to their 
employers' interests, must necessarily be upon their 
plantations during what are called the sicklymonths, are 
annually afflicted with the most distressing fevers, u hile 
the 7ies;roes, genei-ally speaking, enjoy an uninterr(ij)t- ' 
ed exemption from them. Let those who, upon the 
return of frost, visit their country residences, testify 
what hundreds of j)ale and emaciated creatures, worn 
down by fevers and agues, and other diseases of 
which the country is so productive, meet them on their 
way and pass hke shadows before tJu?m. 

These remarks apply with double force and energy, 
when we take into considoriition the tremendous cx- 
pos»n-es to which the cultivation of our great staple 
commodities, Cotton and Rice, necessarily subjects 
the laborer, particularly in the latter. The rich low 
lands and swam|)s which are so providentially calcu- 
lated to furnish us with sources of food and riches, 
would have forever remained unredecnjcd, and where 
golden harvests now meet the eye of the grateful 
proprietor of the soil, nothing but dark and dismal 
swamps would have been seen. "^Vith the introduc- 
tion of Rice Pldnting,^^ says Hewitt, who by the way, 
was abhorrent in the last degree, of slavery, "into 



45 

this country, (Carolina) and the fixing upon it as a 
staple commodity, the necessity of employing Africans 
tor the purpose of cultivation, wns doubled. The low 
lands of Carolina, which are unquestionably the 
richest in the country, nmst have long remained a 
wilderness, had not Africans, whose naturcd constitutions 
were suited to the clime and work, been employed in 
cultivating this useful article of food and commerce.'' 

Here then is a candid acknowledgment from one of 
the most scrupulous writers upon the subject of 
slavery, and who never touches upon it but with feel- 
ings of bitter and determined hostility, even while he 
admits its necessity, under some circumstances. The 
same reasons urged by him at the period when he 
wrote as to the necessity, therefore, of the use ol 
Africans in the cultivation of this valuable staple, may 
now be urged with redoubled force. The country- 
owes almost all its wealth and prosperity, and the 
revenue of the Union an immense increase in its fund, 
to the labor of this strong and hardy race. 

There is another revolting part of our subject to 
which we cannot turn but with mingled feelings of 
indignation and surj)rise. We r(^fer to the charges 
made against us of the general inhmnanity of slave- 
holders in their intercourse with them, and the total 
disregard which is commonly paid to their physical 
comforts and general happiness. We shall make it our 
especial duty to rebut this foul slander, indignant that 
it should have been preferred, yet proud that the refu- 
tation will be as full as it will be conclusive. The 
people of the slave-holding States are as high-minded, 
intelligent, humane and generous as those of anf^- 
section of the Union, and they would disdain a system 
of discipline in relation to tluir domestics that would 



46 

offer the slightest violence to these proud and honora- 
ble feelings. We are insultingly told that the Master's 
authority over his slaves is a tyranny of the most 
odious character; that it is vvUhout bounds and extends 
to a point little short of the power of life and death ; 
that the slave is subject, at all times, from his defenceless 
situation, to the most grinding oppression ; liable to be 
ill treated and wantonly abused, and in short, that 
such is their deplorable condition that they drag out a 
miserable existence, the unhappy victims of a cruel and 
unfeeling tyrant. The authority of the venerable 
Jefferson has been quoted also to strengthen these 
bold and revolting calumnies. The passage is to be 
found in his " Notes on Virginia." " The whole com- 
merce between master and slave is a perpetual exer- 
cise of the most boisterous passions. Our children 
see this and learn to imitate it. I tremble for my 
country when I reflect that God is just. The Almighty 
has no attribute that can take side vvith us in such a 
contest." 

Mr. Smith, to whose valuable and important Speech 
we have so often referred, and in which, are con- 
tinually exhibited such clear evidences of a profound 
and luminous understanding, answers the argument in 
such a manner as must dissipate the objections of the 
most prejudiced. 

" Mr. Siniili Siiid, lit' had tiie li(;;liest regard for thnt venerable pat- 
riot; he was a j^reat philosopher, and a statesman of the first order; 
he knew no words more ap})ropriate in prononnoiuii his eiilocy, than 
those used by him in dernieatine the rharactcr of tiie immortal Wash- 
ington. < Ills memory will be adored while liberty shall have vota- 
ries, his name will triumph overtime, and will, in future ages, assume 
its just station among the most cilebrated worthies of the world.' 
With all this tribute, and witli all the veneration which he felt for 
ihal great man, he did not hesitate to contradict him in the most 
unequivocal terms. The Master has no motives for this Ijoisterous 
liostility. It is at war with his interest, and it is at war with his rom- 
•ori. Tlie wlu>le «(>mmerce between master and slave is patriarchal. 



4t 

The master has every motive to impel him to it. Js to the effect on 
children, it is quite the reverse; the black children are the constant 
associates of the white children ; they eat together, tiiey play together, 
and their affections are oftentimes so strongly formed in early life as 
never to be forgotten ; so much so, that in thousands of instances there 
is nothing but the shadow of slavery left. These observations of Mr. 
Jefferson could not have been founded on facts ; they were written to 
gratiiy a foreigner, at his own request, when every American was 
filled with enthusiasm. They are the effusions of the speculative 
philosophy of his young and ardent mind, and which his riper years 
have corrected. He wrote these notes near forty years ago, since 
which, his life has been devoted to that sort of practical philosophy, 
which enlarges the sphere of human happiness and contributes to the 
promotion of civil liberty ; and during the lohole time his principal 
fortune has been in slaves, and he still continues to hold them. It is 
impossible, -when his mind became enlarged by reflection and informed 
by observation, that he could entertain such sentiments and hold 
slaves at the same time.'' 

It is indeed humiliating to the last degree to listen 

even to such charges as those we have noticed ; but 

it is due to the fair fame of these sections of the Union 

to demonstrate, that the condition of the slave, so far 

from partaking of the misery which has been attributed 

to it, is in every respect preferable to that of the poor 

laboring class of people of any Xjovernment on 

earth, and that if it were not for foreign, subsidiary 

causes, he would remain perfectly satisfied with his 

lot. It is true, indeed, that all slave-holders have laid 

down non-resistance and the most perfect and uniform 

obedience to their orders, as fundamental principles in 

the government of their slaves. This necessarily 

results from the relation in which they stand, and we 

might as well denounce that government a despotism, 

that punishes any infringement of its laws, as to call 

that a tyranny which is nothing more or less than an 

authority unavoidably arising from the very character 

of the connexion between master and slave. This 

authority unquestionably may be abused, but we deny 

that these abuses have ever been S9 frequent a« 



48 

to justify the illiberal and unfeeling calumnies ojT 
which we couiplain. It is not true that the authority 
of the master over his slave is without limitation or re- 
striction ; but, on the contrary, we affirm that il is watch- 
ed and guarded by some very jealous statutory pro- 
visions. He is protected, by the humanity of our laws, 
both in his life and his limbs, and from any brutal 
attack on either. If his life be sacraficed to the wild 
and furious passions of his master, or of any other 
individual, the law punishes the delinquent with death. 
If he be maimed, either by the cutting; off of a limb, 
such as an arm or leg, he. the law follows the offender 
with death also. While the poorer classes of laborers, 
in England, for instance, resort to theft or high- 
way robbery, in orderto supply the wants of themselves 
and of their famishing wives and children, and still their 
cries for bread, because the miserable pittance which 
they had received as the price of their labor was insu- 
fficient, the slave with his family, however numerous, 
looks confidently to his master, who, hjj law, is bound 
to supj)ly them with good and suflicient food and 
clothing, (if his inhumanity chose to with-hold it) 
and who by that law becomes obnoxious to a prosecu- 
tion if he does not comply with its requisition. The 
master is also limited by law as to the duration and 
extent of their labor at the different periods of the 
year, and he cannot exact more; and it is a fact, such 
is the maximum of the labor of tlie slave, that an 
industrious, active negro will perform his task by 
twelve o'clock ; many by two or three, and all, except 
the idle and inattentive, by four o'clock in the niter- 
noon. When his task is done the rest of the tiujc is 
lus own, and he either spends it in cultivating his little 
gpot of ground, in the enjoyment of sleep, or in a 



49 

friendly intercourse with his relations and fellow labor- 
ers on the plantation. As we are plain matter-of-fact 
men, and as this picture may perhaps, by some, be 
thought to partake a little of the romantic, we produce 
the following facts in confirmation of what we have 
stated ; and wc caiuiot here refrain to renew our cordial 
thanks to tiie gentlemen who have furnished them at 
our solicitation. They are known to be men of large 
and extensive planting interests, both in Rice and Cot- 
ton, as well as gentlemen of high standing in the com- 
munity. Their authority is therefore conclusive. The 
subsequent facts were communicated by George 
Edwards Esq. 

*' A day's work allotted to each of my negroes on n>y Plantations is 
done with so much ease, that I have often known them to have finished 
it by eleven to two o'clock in the day ; the remainder of the day is at 
their own disposal, and they are never called upon either by myself 
or my managers after having finished their task, unless in cases oi 
great emergency. 

" I make it an invariable rule, and orders to that effect are strictly 
given to my managers, after my lands are prepared and the crop 
planted, to ascertain the number of my woiHving negroes, and allow to 
each of them a quarter or a half acre of land, or more, if they wish it, 
to plant their own little crops. The drivers then take them off to the. 
lands allotted to them, and, under the direction of my managers, put 
them to work, prepare the ground and plant it with corn froin my own 
corn-houses, precisely in the same manner as they had prepared and 
planted my own fields. When it requires hoeing, after having gone 
over my fields once or twice, their own crops are as regularly hoed 
and attended to as my own. During the Summer, when the harvest- 
ing season commences, their crops are gathered in for them by my 
orders, at the same time with my own, and i often alh^v them the use 
of my boats to carry their produce to market. Independent of their 
crop, I permit them to raise hogs and poultry of every description, 
and many of them supply themselves with bacqn during the winter, 
and have hogs also to dispose of. They appear perfectly happy ai?d 
contented with their situation and Ut- pri\ili'gps allowed them. 
7 



50 

At eacii of my Plantalions there are Hospitals lor the reception aad 
.'tccomodation of the sick, with every necessary article lor their com- 
fort and convenience. Tliere are Nurses in each Hospital who attend 
npon them regularly and administer to their wants, and all the medical 
aid required called in at as early a period as possible. The children 
on the dilierent Plantations have elderly wenches, whose business it 
is to do nothing else but to attend u}K»n them and to supply their little 
wants. They are all well fed and well clothed, and in every respect 
-seem cheerful, happy and contented." 

The next cormiiunication that we present to the 
observation of our readers, is from Benjamin D. 
Roper, Esq. 

" In conformity w ith your request, I send you a hasty and uncon- 
nected statement of the general management and treatment of negroes 
employed on Plantations, as lar as my knowledge extends. In pre- 
paring a field for a crop, the usual labour required of each Negro is 
commonly to bed one task in a day, and a task comprises one hundred 
and five feet square; this task is generally accomplished by sun-set; 
many negroes perform it two or three hours before sun-set. As this 
subject might attract the attention of persons totally unacquainted 
with jilantation work in South-Carolina, it might not be amiss to ob- 
serve that the above mentioned task is required of prime or full hands: 
weak hands, commonly called quarter and half hands, have their 
task proportioned at the same ratio. A prime hand, in counnon, cul- 
tivates five acres of land including his own provisions; more can easily 
be planted and attended, but on a cotton plantation, with favourable 
seasons, it is asnuich as can be conveniently gathered and prejiared for 
market. Alter the crop is planted, the subsequent attendance of it is. 
comparatively, much lighter work. It is not unconnnon for an industri- 
ous negro to liave finished his task by three or four o'clock. In com- 
mon, eacli hand is allowed to cultivate a task on their own account, 
and time alio wf'l them to prepare and plant their corn, peas, pom- 
pions, mel'.ons, &c. &c. In addition to this, sufficient grountl contigu- 
ous to their dwellings is allowctl them lor gardens, from which many 
of them raise fruit and vegetables amply suflicient for their families.. 
IMan}' of the negroes raise hogs, ducks and fowls, and have then- 
bee-hives, whence they uidulge themselves in some of the luxuries as 
wflj'as conveniences of lilt;. It gnly requires, on their part, industry 1«>- 



oi 

insure tliese advantages, as frequent opportunities are allowed them- 
of conveying to market tiie iVuit of their labour. 
'■ They are fed in common, one hah" the year, on corn, the other haU 
the year on potatoes. At stated periods, meat and fish are given to them, 
and the advantages of the rivers, creeks and ponds, are by no means 
inconsiderable, whence oysters, crabs and fish are most amply afibrded 
them. Their dwellings in co)nmon, aie more commodious and com- 
fortable than a large proportion of the white inhabitants of many 
parts of the interior parishes in this state. In sickness there is little 
distinction between them and their masters ; the same medical atten- 
dance and every comfort necessary or desirable are invariably admin- 
istered. Tiiey are clad, in winter with best woolen plains, and iu 
summer with oznaburgs. In the parish where f resiue, there is 
one Episcopal and one Presbyterian Church, regularly o'pened every 
Sal)bath to every Negro, as well as white persons ; and every Negro, 
tliat has produced satisfactory evidence of good character, and there 
are many such, has been invariably admitted to unite with the white 
comnnmicants in celebrating the Lord's Supper. In concluding this 
subject, it may not be hazarding too much to say, that with humane 
masters, the negroes are generally as happy a people as any laboring 
class, perhaps, under heaven ; and if I may be allowed the expression, 
an inhumane master, is a very rare character ; such would be held iv 
contempt and abhorrence.'^ 

We are indebted to the politeness of Robert J. 
TuRNBULL Esq. lor the following communication. It 
is as full and as conclusive as the most bigoted sceptic 
could desire. 

" The condition of our slavTS, within the last thirty years, has been 
considerably ameliorated. Their labor has not only been dimi- 
nislied, but they have been treated with more 'intlulgence and have 
had more attention paid to their comfort ar,d accoiumodiition than 
formerly. The introduction of mills and maciiinery for pounding 
and preparing tlie rice for market, which was previou.-ly accomplished 
by manual labor, forms a new era in the history of their state of labor. 
By this improvement, the reduction of hard work may he estimated 
at nearly one half, whilst the wafer culture in the management of d'.<; 
rice crop, practis'^d !)y many jtlnnter';. and the substitution of cotton 



52 

for indigo on the high lands, have also greatly contributed to lessen 
their toil. 

" No culture for our country can be easier than that of the cotton 
plant. With the excption of the second and third hoeings, which 
generally take place in the month of May, there is, comparatively, 
little or no labor in attending to the crop, unless there be some 
defect in management; this sometimes occurs with careless Planters, 
or with those who over-plant. With cotton there is no cutting, or 
carrying, or heavy harvesting. The pods, ripening in succession, and 
continuing for four and five months, make the harvest slow and tedi- 
ous, but the work is light and easy, so much so, that all the pregnant 
women even, on tlie plantation, and weak and sickly negroes incapa- 
ble of other labor, and all the boys and girls above nine and ten years 
of a<^e, are then m requisition to assist in gathering the wool wliich 
h.an<TS from the pods. Children are in fact the most useful hands at 
this season. From the smallness of iheir fingers and their low stature, 
they daily pick in more than many adults. Nor is the cleaning and 
preparing the crop for market, attended wilh labor. The ginning* of 
the cotton by machines constructed for the purpose, impelled by 
treadles, would to some appear a laborious employment 5 but it is not 
so, for most able bodied negroes would prefer to work at these than 
to sit down and pick the moats from the wool. In short, from the 
time that the seed is put into the ground, which is in March, until 
Christmas when the crop is harvested, there is not, with the excep- 
tion of the second and third hoeing, already stated, any hard laboi^ 
jjerformed by our slaves. 

''The mechanics and artizans of Europe, and of some sections of our 
own country, labor in their employments, not only all day, but dur-r 
ing part of the night. Our negroes on the contrary have their tasks 
allotted to them, and these are so api)ortioncd, that there are few who 
cannot perfornt them by mid-day, or within an hour or two qfter- 
loards. No matter what the work is, which a slave is ordered to \wv- 
form. If its nature be such as to admit of his being tasked, he works 
mider this task arrangement and no other ; whether it be listingl of the 
STonnd, banking, hoeing, thinning of the plants, gathering in of corn or 
blades, or ditching or draining, splitting t)f rails, nuiking of fences or 
cutting wood ; his work lt)r the day is known to him before hand, long 

*Tliat is separating the wool from tlic seed. 

i Taking off the swurd wilh a hoe and drawing it (ogethrriis i\ foui'dition for 
g bed lor tiie pliint. 



53 

custom having Sxed it. It may be easily imagined that undtr such an 
arrangement^ the slave goes to his work with clieerfulness, because when 
he accomplishes it, the rest of the day is at his own disposal, which 
he industriously applies to the cultivation of his own little garden or 
piece of ground allotted to him. It is in the scfison of cotton picking 
alone, that the slave labors {if it can be called labor) from sun-rise 
to sun-set. This is a species of employment, in wiiich no task can be 
assigned for the quantity which a person can gather in a day ; de- 
pends upon the state of tlie field, the weather, the wamth or coolness 
oftheday, and many other circumstances. At all other seasons of 
the year, upon all well regulated plantations, the average time of 
laboring does not exceed seven or eight hours in the twentj'-four. 
The working of our slaves by task, as it is called, distinguishes them 
from the laborers of other countries in an especial manner, when it is 
known, that the daily work allotted, is so considerabli/ within that 
which it is in their power to perform. This daily task does not vary ac- 
cording to the arbitrary will and caprice of their owners, and although 
is not fixed by law, it is so well settled by long usage, that upon every 
plantation it is the same. Should any owner increase the work be- 
yond what is customary, he subjects himself to the reproach of his 
neigjibors, and to such discontent amongst his slaves as to mahef 
them of but little use to him. 

The daily Tasks are these : 

Cutting firewood, - - - one cord. 
Splitting rails, - - - one hundred. 

C a quarter of an acre, or 10?> 
Listing ground, - - - .) feet square, into 21 beds fivo 

^ feet a-part. 

Breaking or Bedding, - - - do. do. 

Hoeing of cotton or corn, - - half an acre. 

Ginning of cotton, _ - - twenty-five lbs. clean. 

Moating of do. ... fifty lbs. clean. 

Ditcliing, in light land, - - 420 cubic feet, 

do. in clay do. - - 2 10 do. do. 

Gathering blades, - - - half an acre. 

Breaking in coin, ready for carting, do. do. 

Digging in potatoes, - - - do. do. 

'• The subsistence of the slaves consists from JMarch.until August of 
eorn, ground into grists or meal, which made into what is called hu- 
mirii/, or baked into corn bread, furnishes a most substantial ai;<l 



54 

wholesome food. The other six months they are fed upon the sweet 
j>otHtoe, which is boiled, baked or roasted, as their taste or fancy may 
direct. These articles are distributed in weekly allowances, and in 
sufficient quai>tity, together with a proper allowance of salt. The 
skim milk or clabber of the dairy is divided daily. It would be very 
desirable if regular rations of bacon or some other animal food could 
be furnished them; but as this cannot always be practicable, it is dif- 
ficult to make it a matter of permanent regulation. Meat, therefore, 
when given, is only by way of indulgence or favor. In those seasons 
of the year, when they are exposed to the most labor, they receive 
bacon, soU-Jish, and occasionally fresh meat. Those who live on 
creeks and rivers are at no loss for an abudance offish and oysters, to 
say nothing of the little comforts which all negroes have by the raising 
and sale of their pigs, poultr}', &x. which ihey are permitted to do. 
But take their subsistence as it is, without any allowance of meat, is it 
not infinately preferable to the oat-meal of Scotland, and the potatoes 
of Ireland; a species of food very mi'erior to the sweet jjotafoe of a. 
Southern soil? Our negroes could not work if fed upon the Irish 
jootatoe. 

" Their clothing consists of a winter and a summer suit; the former 
of a jacket, waistcoat and overalls of Welsh plains, and the latter of oz- 
naburg or homespun, or other substitutes. They have shoes, hats and 
hi^ndkerchiefs, and other little articles, such as tobacco, pipes, rum &:q. 
Their dwellings consist of good clay cabins, with clay chimneys, but 
so much attention has of late years been paid to their comfort in this 
particular, that it is now very common, particularly on the Sea Islands, 
to give them substantial framed houses on brick foundations and wiih 
bt'ick chimneys. Many are of opinion that they enjoy more health 
in open temporary cabins with groimd or dirt Hoors. Fait this does 
jiot correspond with the experience of those who willingly incur the 
expense of better buildings. In feickness they are taken care of, and 
on most plantations, there are sick houses, or hospitals, for the recep- 
tion of those who da not go out to Mork; a ])ractice which it would 
be well if it were more general. AVlicn the patient is reallt/ sick 
everv comfort and attention may be dispensed by such an institution, 
whilst to such as enter it only to skulk tiom labor, (which is pecu- 
liar to some negroes,) it liecomes ix prn'ttcntiarif. 

'• To each head of a family is allotted a piec«' of ground around his 
h'liise. as n gafden sj)ot. in adclition (n «j)icli. carh hdioier has fifty- 



55 

two and a half feet by one hundred and five, set apart for him 'in tlic 
iield. To some, more is allowed. 

" That the slaves in South-Carolina are Iiumaftely treated, and thai 
they are better provided with food and clothing than are the poor in 
most countries, will appear to any impartial observer. No better 
Evidence need be adduced than their cheerfulness antl mirth at al^ 
times, both in toicn and cmtntry. 

« With all their mirth and merriment, however, they do not seem 
more contented than they were thirty or forty years ago, when the 
discipline was more rigid, their labor more constant and their com- 
forts fewer. This is undoubtedly owing to a relaxation in disipUnc 
which experience abundantly proves has been almost carried too far. 
The regulations that would be applicable to whites entirely fail when 
applied to the government of slaves. The only principle upon which 
any authority over them can be maintained \sfear ; and he who de- 
nies this, has but little knowledge of them. AVhere there is this princi- 
ple in the bosom of a slave, coupled with a strong sense of his inferi- 
ority to his master, he is happy and contented, and this is almost 
universally the case with the country Negroes. In his dreams, no 
visions visit him to remind him of his servitude. Born a slave, he 
need only be assured that he will be well fed and clothed for life, and 
worked in moderation, and he will regard himself as the happiest of 
mortals. 

« A proof of the humanity with which these people are treated, is 
their increase by natural population. There is no certainty as to 
what this increase is, because of the importation of slaves from Africa, 
until 1808, and the emigration into this, from other states. But it is 
believed to be infinitely greater, than the increase amongst the poor 
in any part of Europe. In some parts of the State where the country is 
healthy there is a duplication every fifteen years. In many, every 
twenty years, whilst In some portions there is but a tri'fting increase in 
the same period. But this is owing not lo any fault in their treatment, 
but to the extreme insalubrity of the air in some portions of the State. 
A reference also to the diseases which afilict our negroes, would show, 
that their food is both more wholesome and more abundant than that 
of the laboring classes in other countries. Dropsies, rickets, 
scrofula, typhus fever, and tlie long train of diseases which attend 
upon want and poverty, are far less frequent amongst our slaves, than 
in England. Scotland and Ireland. The diseases most fatal axe 
eetarrhas, pleurisL^s. pevipenu.uony. and other discase.s of the ches't 



\ 



56 

and limgs. These carry ulf numbers of prime negroes, annually, 
which may be owing to their carelessnes and imprudence, and to 
their propensity to be out at nights, visiting the neighboring plan- 
tations. 

" The foregoing remarks are principally applicable to the lower 
parts of South-Carolina and particularly to the Sea Islands . Th# 
treatment of those in the inferior ami upper country differs no further, 
than that the animal food which they receive may be more liberal ; 
the country affording more facilities in this respect. Upon the lohole, 
I think it may be affirmed with the greatest truth that so intimately 
blended are the consider at ions of humanittj and interest at the pre- 
sent day, that few laborers in any part of the world, work easier 
nndhatJC more comfort, and are, upon the whole, more contented than 
our black population.^^ 

We are obligated to the attention of Elias Horry, 
Esq. for the communication which follows: — 

"With regard to the accommodation and general comfort of the 
slaves in this country, there is no question but that they enjoy a 
greater share of the blessings of life than falls to the lot of the 
laboring poor of most countries. Their dwellings, on my planta- 
tion, are built in such a manner as to afford them every protection 
and comfort, and are generally about forty feet in length and twenty 
feet wide, with a double brick chimney in the centre that forms two 
tenements; each tenement has two rooms and a hall. 

Their food consists of hominy, potatoes, peas, and small-rice, and 
is regularly given out to them overy week. The waters of the 
Santee, upon which I live, abound with the finest fish, and all the 
grown Negroes, and many of the children, are supplied with fish- 
hooks and lines by which they are enabled to get a regular supply 
offish from the river. In tlie summer season salted fish is occa- 
sionally given to them. Each grown Negro is allowed a small 
Field, say from a quarter to a half acre of land, or more if he 
desires it, which he plants, and the profits of which lie appro- 
priates exclusively to his own use. They are permitted tO 
raise poultry of every description which they either sell to tlieir 
master or send to market. In cases of sickness they have every 
medical attention necessary. Each plantation is supjjlied with 
medicines of every descrijitiun : e\'ery attention is thoreibre paid to 
♦he sick, and as the diseases of our Negroes are of a simple oaturi" \X 



57 

is raiely neces'^ary, except in cas?s where surgical aid is required, to 
send for a physician. There are nurses on every plantation, whose 
business it is to do nothing but attend to the sick and administer to 
tlieir wants. In addition to which, in cases of severe illness, one or 
more of the family to which the invalids may belong are permitted 
tb wait upon them. The nurses ai'e also supplied with sugar, tea, 
rum, molasses and vinegar for the use of the sick. 

Their clothing consists of white plains, and they are also furnish- 
ed With London dufUl blankets of the best cjuality, a pair of shoes^, 
and a Coromantal Scotch cap. The blankets are given out once 
every three years ; and it often occurs from the natm-e of his work, 
tiiat a laborer may require another pair of shoes, which is given to 
him. Every woman has an additional blanket at the birth of every 
child, as well as clothes for her infant. 

Their labor is, comparatively, UgM and easy, so that an industrious 
negro can very easily accomplish his task early in the afternoon, 
and the rest of the time is at his own disposal. A quarter of an 
acre is generally called a task, but the actual task given depends 
very much upon the nature of the work. — In digging land a quarter 
of an acre is always the task. In threshing rice the men thresh 600 
slieaves, and the women 500, and never more. Those of my 
n^'groes who are mechanics labor in proportion, and if they are 
called upon to do any extra work, in their oivn time, they are regu- 
larly paid for it. In one instance I paid in one year to a carpenter 
belonging to me, .^150, for the extra services of himself and two 
sons, in rearing the frames of five negro houses, I finding the stuff. 
Each driver, blacksmith and bricklayer, has, every other year, a 
greatcoat, in addition to his clothing; and the nurses have also a 
cloak every third year, independent of their clothes. The head of 
every family has a small garden allowed him, contiguous to his 
dwelling-, independent of the little field I have mentioned, from 
which he gathers as many vegetables as supply his wants. They 
appear happy and contented, and the discipline used to keep them 
in proper order is by no means severe, but is always consistent 
with feelings the of justice and of humanity." 

We might easily multiply the evidence upon this 
subject, but enough has been already produced to 
show the utter destitution of truth in the statements 
of those who have audaciously traduced us, and repre- 



58 

sented our system of discipline with regard to our 
slaves in so false a light. The corresponding testi- 
mony of the gentlemen of whose communications we 
have availed ourselves, is as full and conclusive, as if 
we were to produce a volume. They are all of them 
Planters of liberal and enlightened minds — possessing 
large and independent fortunes — owning an immense 
number of slaves — and from their perfect knowledge of 
the general state and condition of that class of our 
population, eminently qualified to give us the best 
possible information. 

If the negroes on our plantations live in the 
manner we have shewn, those immediately around 
our persons have still greater facilities of rendering 
themselves more happy and contented. Most of the 
latter are fed from the same table at which their 
masters dine, or are daily supplied with the greatest 
abundance of both animal and vegetable food— cloth- 
ed in a superior manner — occupying rooms in the out 
buildings, as good nearly as those in the family man- 
sion itself — and in every respect treated more like 
children than servants. They have no wants that are 
not immediately supphed. Independent of all this, 
they are allowed the privileges of moral and religious 
instruction, and every Church has a portion of its 
galleries set apart for their accommodation. Here 
they may resort and listen to the word of God, 
and partake, with their masters and mistresses, and 
under the same benedictions, of (he Holy Sacra- 
ment. 

The negroes in the interior of the State live 
equally well, and in some respects they are more upon 
a level with their masters. They work by the side of 
their owners while in the field, and we ourselves have 



89 

seen some of them in the upper districts sitting at 
the same table with them, using, at the same time, 
however, such circumspection as denoted tlieir inferi- 
ority—just as the clansmen of the feudal ages sat at 
the social board of their high and bannered lord, yet 
preserved that distance of behaviour which the most 
boisterous hospitality could never make them forget. 
In the interior of the State the negroes are not 
allowanced in food, but have as nmch corn, potatoes 
and bacon, as they can possibly consume. The barns 
are open to all, and each takes what he requires. 
If it be asked why those in the lower country are 
allowanced, while those in the interior are not, the 
answer is, that, such are the facilities of transpor- 
tation to market, and the disposition to thievery, 
so innate to the blacks, that a Planter's barn would 
in a very short time become bankrupt of its wealth, 
and the whole of his substance vanish hke unsub- 
stantial moonshine. 

We have no reason to blush, therefore, ehher for 
the existence or toleration of Negro Slavery among 
us, nor need we dread any fair and candid compa- 
rison that may be made between their physical and 
moral comforts, and those of the laboring poor in 
England, or any other part of the World. Contrast 
their condition with that of the poor in England, the 
mother of our religion — the boasted land of freedom 
and of glory — and the pride of ancient and of modern 
Europe. 

Mr. SouTHEY, an Englishman, as much bigoted 
as any man who ever bent his knee to royalty, in 
speaking of the English poor, sums up the misery 
of their condition with the following climax of 
human wretchedness : 



60 

'• To talk of tlngiish happiness is like talking of Spartan frcedorta : 
the Helots are overlooked. In no country can such riches be acquired 
by commerce, but it is the one who grows rich by the labor of the 
hundred. The hundred human beings like himself, as wonderfully 
fashioned by Nature, gifted with the like capacities and equally made 
for mimortality, are sacrljiced, body and soul. Horrible as it must 
needs appear, the assertion is true to the very letter. The// are de- 
prived inehildhood of all instruction, and all enjoyment of the sports 
in which childhood instinctively indulges, of fresh air hy day and of 
natural sleep by night. Their health, physical and moral, is alil<e 
destroyed. They die of diseases induced by unremitting task work, 
by confinement in the impure atmosphere of crouded rooms, by the 
particles of metallic or vegetable dust lokich they are continually 
inhaling, or they live to grow up tcithout decency, without comfortj 
and tvithout hope; without morals, zoithoid religion, and without 
shame; and bring forth slaves like themselves to tread in the same 
path of misery." 

Such was the condition of the English poor, par- 
ticularly of the manufactoring class, in the year 1807. 
Those who know any thing of their present state, are 
aware that their hopelessness and despair have ren- 
dered it ten thousand times worse. Of the miseries of 
the Irish it would be a mockery of humanity to speak. 

In summing up the arguments which we have ad- 
duced in the foregoing pages, we cannot but form, 
among others, the following conclusions. Melancholy 
and painful as some of them are in their character, 
they are, nevertheless, we think, clearly deducible 
from the propositions we have discussed — 

1 — 'The United States are one for national pur- 
poses, but they are separate for their internal regula- 
tion and government — acknowledging and clinging 
to the Union as the common centre of attraction, they 
have still their appropriate and peculiar orbits, like 
the stars.'* 

' Crafts" Oration on the Lunatic Asylum, p. 21. 



Gl 

% — That the people of the North and East havf^ 
always exhibited a most unfriendly feeling on subjects 
deeply atfecting the most vital interests of the South 
and West — and that they have been, in their mode of 
legislation, uniformly hostile to the happiness and se- 
curity of these sections of the Union. 

3 — Tiiat the existence of slavery among us vv as not 
an institution of our own voluntary adoption — and 
ought not, in justice, therefore, to be attributed to us. 

4 — That the Southern sections of the Union, before 
and after the Declaration of Independence, uniformly 
exhibited a disposition to restrict the extension of the 
evil — and have always manifested as cordial a disposi- 
tion to ameliorate it as those of the Northern and 
Eastern divisions of our Empire. 

6 — That the actual state and condition of our slave 
population are such as reflect no disgrace whatever 
upon the character of the country — that our slaves 
are in every respect infinitely better provided with 
food and clothing, and all the other comforts of life, 
than the laboring poor of any country in the world — 
and share, in general, a greater proportion of happi- 
ness than falls to the lot of millions of our own color. 

There are one or two remaining branches of our 
design which carry with them a weight of interest too 
important to be slightly discussed or imperfectly 
explored. 

We regard our negroes as the " Jacohins^^ of the 
country, against whom we should always be upon 
our guard, and who, although we fear no perma- 
nent effects from any insurrectionary movements on 
their part, should be watched with an eye of steady 
and unremitted observation. 



62 

The disposition to insurrection and plunder, the 
united result of ignorance and sloth, exhibited itself 
among the negroes of the colony of Carolina at a 
very early period, and was persisted in, from year to 
year, until it ripened into open rebellion. This was 
promptly and immediately put down — for with our an- 
cestors there existed no temporising feeling upon this 
subject, nor did they sacrifice to a protracted course of 
proceeding the lives and security of the people of the 
counfry. They used their strength as that of their 
bloody opponents would have been used against them ; 
anj'i they were indubitably justified by every princi- 
ple of the first and great law of nature — self-preser- 
vation. 

The earliest insurrectionary movements among the 
negroes of Carolina, of which we have been able to 
trace any very authentic record, may be referred to 
the year 1711, when Governor Gibbes presided over 
the Colonial Assembly. This was about forty years 
only after the first settlement of the country. Governor 
Gibbes appears to have fulfilled the duties of his re- 
sponsible situation with great fidelity and zeal, and 
neglected no opportunity to guard the Colony against 
the growing evils to which it was likely to be subjected 
from these convulsions. In 171 1, as will be recollected, 
he proposed to the Assembly a restriction on the im- 
portation of negroes that were daily brought into the 
Colony, and recommended an enlargement of the 
penalties of the Negro Act, in as much as "7Y did not 
reach up to some crimes'''' that they had already com- 
mitted, and represented, at the same time, '''hoio inso- 
lent and mischevious^^ they had grown. He was so 
deeply impressed with the necessity of high handed 
measures in relation to them, that in the June session 



es 

of the same year, he expresses himself in still stronger 
terms — " We further recommend unto you the repairs 
' of the fortifications about Charles Town, and the 

* amending of the Negro Ad, who are, of late, grown 
' to that h'lght of impudence that there is scarce a day 
^passes ivithout some robbery or insolence committed 

* by them in one part or other of this Province.''^ 

It appears from the following Extracts, which we 
have made from the Journals of that period, that the 
House of Assembly actively co-operated with the Pa- 
triarchal feelings of their Governor, and entered into 
Resolutions strongly expressive of the dangers to which 
they were exposed and of the necessity of the most 
active measures to remove them. 

" June 20th, 1711 — The House being informed that 
' there are severalNegroes run away from their masters, 

* and keep out, armed, arid robbing and plundering 

* houses and plantations, and putting the inhabitants of 
' this Province in great fear and terror. Resolved, by 

* this House that the Governor be addressed to take 
' effectual care to apprehend, take and suppress the 

* said ran-aways, and to assure his Honor that this 
' House will, at all times, be ready to concur with the 

* Governor and Council in defraying the expenses of 

* soe good and necessary a designe." In the October 
session of the same year, though the Colony was 
threatened with invasion by a large Fleet that had 
been fitted out by the French, to scour and devastate 
the shores of the Southern States, and notwithstand- 
ing all the apprehensions necessarily attendant upon 
the receipt of such information, still, the dangers to 
which they were exposed from the existence of an 
internal enemy, more to be dreaded, because he fought 
like an assassin and a coward, seem to have occupied 



. 64 

the largest space in the Public Councils. Governor 
GiBBES appears to have looked to the latter with 
uncommon mid increasing vigilance. 

"On the constant complaint, since your last meet- 

* ing, of divers persons of this Province, of the barbari- 
^ ties, felonies and ff62<.s^e5, committed by some run-away 
' Negroes on our inhabitants, we desired such of the 
' members of your House as was then in Town to 
' meet us, and we agreed to give unto any person who 
' should take or bring dead or aWve Sebastian,the Span- 
' ish, or Hidling's Negroe, as an encouragement. Fifty 
' Pounds — or to such as should* take uj) any other 
' Negroe, runaway for forty days. Five Pounds, for the 
' conlirmation whereof, we want the concurrence of 
' your House — and since we are on this subject do 

* think it a matter worthy of your highest consideration, 

* immediately to draw up a bill for their better ordering, 
' that effectually may prevent the feais and jealousies 

* wee now lye under from the insolence of the Negroes, 
' wee have already in this Province and the numbers 
^ that are daily brought unto us." 

This Sebastian was a notorious villain and outlaw ; 
and the reason of his having had this price set upon 
his head was for the wanton and cold blooded atroci- 
ties he had committed, in the burning and destruction 
of all the substance of several jicrsons, inhabitants of 
the Province. Among others, we fmd the Assembly 
of the same year, granting " Thirty Pounds out of 
' the public Treasury, ibr the leliefe of Elizabeth 
' Dutcji and her poor family, the said Elizabeth having 
' her house and all her substance burned by Sebastian, 
' the SpanishNegroe" — and "to SarahPerry, widdow, 
' the sum of Ten Poimds, in consideration of the 
' !z;reat loss she sustained by the death of her Indian 



^ 65 

• who was killed by Sebastian the Spanish Indian.'' 
The reward offered for Sebastian soon stimulated thq 
avarice of the Indians who literally hiintod him down 
like a wild beast, took him in triumjDh to CharlesTown, 
where he met the fate to \>hich his villainies so richly 
entitled him. 

There is one more remaining paragraph, from a 
subsequent Speech of the Governor to the Assembly in 
the same year, in which he again reiterates the absolute 
and paramount necessity, to have the '-^ Negro Act cor- 
rected.^^ All these, united, present us with the first and 
early operations of a spirit of dissatisfaction and revolt, 
which, although it has in subsequent periods been more 
widely disclosed, has nevertheless, always, like all other 
domestic Insurrections, been promptly and effectually 
quelled. 

With regard to any very serious or permanent ef- 
fects resulting from the insurrectionary movements of 
our negroes, we must confess that we {eel little or no 
apprehension. The superior advantages with which 
nature has gifted, and art strengthened and fortified 
our condition, render any practicability of success on 
their part utterly out of the question. The struggle, 
it is true, might be a bloody and an awful one; but 
it would be limited to a very short period. A few 
hours would decide the conflict, and the utter exter- 
mination of the black race would be the inevitable 
consequence. In such an event, it would be difficult 
to discriminate. The innocent, as well as the guilty, 
would alike fall a sacrifice to the vengeance of violr;- 
ted humanity. We feel the more confirmed in this 
opinion, not only from an intimate knowledge of the 
genius and disposition of that class of our population, 

but from a varietv of other sources of informatiojj. all 
9 



66 J 

af which justify its accuracy. In the first place — ^the 
history of every nation that has ever been afflicted 
with domestic rebellions of this description, furnishes 
the most satisfactory evidence with what little success 
they have been attended, and how happily the spirit 
of murder and of rapine has been defeated in its un- 
holy office. " We recollect" says the Edinburgh Re- 
view of 1802, in an article on the " Crisis of the Sugar 
Colotiies,^^ 'Hhe history of the Peruvian Revolt and of 
the Servile wars in Campania and Scicily, and con- 
sider that insurrections of colonies and provinces, as 
well as domestic rebellions^ may be quelled. But above 
all, when we cast our eyes over the very scene where 
the great drama that we are now contemplating; is dis- 
played, we find various facts, which, more strongly 
than a thousand fine spun reasonings, clearly evince 
the possibility of reducing to their cane pieces, coflee 
grounds and spice walks, the most fierce and licentious 
of the African race. 

" The constant state of warfare in which the Maroons 
(aspeciesofiVe^roes) of Dutch Guyana have remain- 
ed with the whites for above a century, has caused the 
colony to be surrounded with a regular cordon of 
troops, and a chain of military posts. Various insur- 
rections have disturbed the peace of the settlements. 
Sometimes the Negroes have been completely success- 
ful, as in the year 1763, when the colony of Berbice 
was wholly in their possession ; it was quickhj restored^ 
however^ and the revolters actuallij submitted, before 
the arrival of the force destined to reduce them. 

"The foruiidable rebellion of the Jamaica slaves, in 
1762, is well known; and in almost e^ery island in 
the Archipelago have repeated insurrections broken 
out ; sometimes the result of plans laid whh the utmost 
secrecy, and very widely extended, alw ays accom- 



67 

panied by the horrors of African warfare, but tmi- 
formlij quelled after a short struggle, in which, the disci- 
pline and policy of the Europeans overcame the vast 
numbers and ferocious strength of a savage people, and 
reduced them to their accustomed habits of fear and 
labor. It is in vain, that t)ur author paints to us the 
instinctive dread of the slaves, as a peculiar principle, 
a mysterious charm, which, if once broken, cannot 
be restored. We believe it to be the same kind of 
speJl which keeps men in obedience to absolute go- 
vernments; which is latent in the magic rod of a 
Prussian or Austrian officer; and which may, indeed, be 
suspended by accidental occurrences ; but, if arising 
from the relative situation and peculiar circumstances 
of the rulers and the governed, will speedily be replaced, 
and regain its powerful influence. 

" In short, qf whatever nature that principle may be 
which keeps the African laborers in subordination to 
the white inhabitants, whether, as our author describes 
it, it is of a peculiar nature, sui-genus, or, as we are 
rather disposed to believe, arising from the influence 
o{ superior policy, and closer union among the masters : 
we have adduced examples of its being suspended, 
and to all appearance destroyed. Its restoration in 
nil those cases, is no less certain.'''^ 

Again — the Edinburgh Review, vol. 2, (1805,) on 
'^ Dallas'^ History of the Maroons,''^ in speaking of the 
little prospect of success on their part, when conflict- 
ing with ihe decided superiority of the whites whom 
they were to oppose, furnishes a conclusion as clear as 
it is reconcilable to the testimony of all other historical 
facts. 

" The Maroons," says the article in question, " had 
various advantages in their knowledge of the country, 



68 

their acutes eiises, and their perseverance under hard- 
ships and privation. These are tlie only advantages 
of savages, and to counterbalance them, we apprehend 
the advantages peculiar to civilized warriors are ahitn- 
dantly sufficient. We conceive that discipline, artillery 
and regular supplies of provisions ivill generally render 
acuteness of sense superfluous, patience and persever- 
ance unnecessary, and acquaintance with the fastnesses 
of the country of little avaiV 

There is still more abundant testimony at conmiand 
in the history of ozf/' own State, to shew the utter fallacy 
of any attempt to revolutionize the present condition 
of our negro population, and which puts at rest all 
hopes of success in this particular. V^aluable lives, it 
is true, may be lost, and blood may run in torrents for 
an hour, but defeat in such an insane project must be 
the inevitable result. 

The following historical facts are of too valuable 
a nature to be omitted. They throw a light upon this 
subject, by which any one who runs may read ; and, 
while they give confidence to those who are naturally 
timid, they strengthen the courage of those who arc 
born to be their protectors. Our wives and daughters 
need not indulge any serious apprehensions so long 
as we possess the powerful and efficient means which 
we do of giving them the safety they require, and for 
which no sacrifice can be too great. 

The first open rebellion which took place in Caro- 
lina where the Negroes were actually armed and 
embodied, is traceable as far back as the year 1730. 
In the month of August of that year, a conspiracy 
was detected, the plan of which had been long 
secretly agitated. Tv\ o methods had been proposed 
in order to carry it into execution ; one, that the ne- 



69" 

groes in each family, in the dead of the night, were 
to murder all their masters and the white men of 
every family, in the neighborhood in which there 
were no Negroes. There was so much distrust and 
want of confidence, however, among them, that they 
resolved to adoj>t the other proposition, which was, 
that they shoidd assemble in the neighborhood of the 
lown, under the pretence of a " Dancing-bout," 
and, when proper preparations were made, to rush 
into the heart of the city, take possession of all the 
arms and ammunition they could find, and murder 
all the white men, and then turn their forces to the 
different plantations. Such was the secrecy with 
which this conspiracy was conducted, that it was 
discovered only a short time previous to its projected 
explosion, and many of the negroes had actually as- 
sembled. As soon as the discovery was made, the 
citizens, by '"^private orders and ivithout noise,'''' rendez- 
voused at their respective points of alarm, and imme- 
diately marched to the place where the Negroes 
were collected, and without the slightest opposition took 
the whole of them prisoners. The ringleaders of the i 
rebellion were immediately executed, and the remain- ! 
der returned to their daily labor and obedience. 

In the year 1739, there were no less than three 
formidable insurrections among our slaves, in which 
many valuable lives were lost, and, during the fury 
and devastation of which, the most detestable outra- 
ges were committed. They were all, however, in- 
stantly quelled, and the measure of retribution was full 
to overflowing. These insurrections were all foment- 
ed by the Spaniards in St. Augustine, w ho clandestine- 
ly gave protection to all the fugitive slaves from this 
colony, and by sen(,ling their Priests as cmmissaries 



70 

'among our Negrot's, created among them such wild, 
and visionary id/?as of liberty and freedom, as finally 
plunged them into oj3en rebellion. 

Hewitt gives us the following interesting account 
of this Insurrection. 

"At this time, (about the year 1740,) there were above 40,000 
Negroes in the Province. Long had liber*)) and protection been 
promised and proclaimed to theui by the Spaniards at Augustine, 
nor were all the negroes in the province strangers to the proclama- 
tion. At different times S|)anish emissaries had been found secretly 
tampering with them, and persuading them to fly from slaver^^ 
Five negroes, who were cattle hunters, at Indian Land, some of 
whom belonged to Captain McPherson, after wounding his son and 
killing another man, made their escape. Several more attempting to 
getaway wi^ve taken, tried, and hanged at Charles Town. 

" While Carolina was kept in a state of constant fear and agitation 
from this quarter, an insurrection openW broke out in the heart of the 
settlement which alarmed the whole province. A number of ne- 
groes having assembled together at Stono, flrst surprised and killed 
two young men in a ware-house, and then plundered it of guns and 
ammunition. Being thus provided with arms, they elected one of 
their number captain, and agreed to follow him, marching towards 
the souUi-west, with colours flying and diums beating, like a discip- 
lined comp my. I'hi y forcibly enterc<l the house of Mr. Godfrey, 
and havini^ ;ii./rdered him, his wife, and children, they took all the 
arms he hud in it, srt fire to the house, and then proceeded totrards 
Jacksonborongh. In tlieir way they plundered and burnt (very 
house, killing every while person they found in them, and eouipelling 
the Negroes to Join them. Governor Bull retuining to Charleston 
from the southwaicl, met ihem, and, observing them armed, spread 
the alarm, which soon reached the Presbyterian Church at W^iltown, 
where Archibald Stobo was preaching to a numerous congregation of 
Planters in that quarter. By a law of the province, all Planters 
weie obliged to carry their arms to Chinch, which at this critical 
juncture proved a very useful and necessar}- regulation. The women 
were left in Church trembling with fear, while the militia, under the 
command of Captain Bee, marched in quest of the Psegroes, who 
by this time had become formidable, from the number that joined 
them. They had marched about twelve miles, and spread desola- 
tion through all the plantations in their way. They halted in an 
open lleld, and began to sin<x and ilance, by way of trium])]i. Du- 
ring these rejoicings, the militia discovered them, and st itioned them- 
selves ill diflerent places around then), to prevent them from making 
their escape. One party advanced into the open field and attacked 
them, and, having killed some iNegroes, the remainder took to the 
woods and were disj)ersc(l. Miiny run back to their j)laiitations, in 






71 

hopes of escaping suspicion from the absence of their masters; but 
the greater part ivere taken and tried. Such as had been compelled 
to join them, contrary to their inclination, were pardoned, but all the 
chosen leaders and first insurgents suffered death. 

" All Carolina was struck with terror and consternation by this 
Insurrection, in which a6ot»e twenty persons were murdered betbre. 
it was quelled."' 

We cannot omit to give place to the very valuable 
Document which follows. It presents a faithful and 
afflicting picture of the Province at this period, and 
details with heart-rending accuracy the sufferings 
through which it had passed. What greater or more 
honorable proof can we have of the bold and perse- 
vering spirit of our ancestos. Notwithstanding the 
difficulties and dangers which surrounded them on 
all sides and the afflictions with which they were vis- 
ited, they manfully breasted the storm and triumphed 
over every obstacle. 

We have preserved both the style and punctuation 
of the original, a copy of which we have taken from 
the Secretary of State's Office in Charleston : 

PETITION and REPRESENTATION to His Majesty of the present state o/ 

the Province. 

TO THE king's MOST EXCELLENT AIAJE.STY. 

The Humble Petition and Representation of the Council and Assembly of 
your Majesty's Province of South-Carolina upon the present state of the 
said Province : 
MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN, 

We your Majesty's most dutiful and Loyal Su1)jects the Members of your 
Majesty's Council; and the Members of the Commons Hou^e of Assembly of 
this your Maje-ly's Province of South-Carolina, now met together in General 
Assembly, to take under consideration the dangerous sitiialion in uliicit tin Pro 
rince now is, Most humbly beg leave lo nprpsetit to yonr Majesty, that it is with 
the utmost grief and concern we find tlii^ Province grehtly reducsd and weak- 
ened, by a series of Calamities and Misfortunes which have attended it for some 
time past. The Small Po.r, in the year 1738, succeeded by a Pesliteulinl Fevtr, 
in the year 1739, whereby numbers who had escaped the first were carried off 
by the'last That again succeeded by an Insurrection of our slates in which, 
many of the Inhabitants iccre murdered in a barbarous and cruel manner; and 
that no sooner q}ielled ilmn another projected m Charles Town, and a third lately 
in the very heart of the Sctllements, hid happily discorered lime enough tu be pre- 
vented. Wrestling svith dilficultys at home, we see ourselves at the s«me time 
exposed to dangers from abroad, to Eneroys very near, and by far too nuuj^ 



i 



• 



72 

roiis ami ))0\veiful (or us ; and tiiat the many succours wliich your Majesty has 
been graciously [ileased ("rom time (o time to give us, and what we, weak as 
we are, have been able to do for ourselves, conies lar short of your Majesty's 
Koyal Intention and Expectations from thence. 

It is with great re:i=on, we apprehend, tJiat That part of our Calamifys, pro- 
ceeding from the frecjiient attempts of our Slaves, arises from the designs and 
intrignesof our Enemys, the Spaniards in St. Angn.-tiue and Florida, who have 
had the rnin and desli'iiction of these your Majesty's Colmiys of South-Caro- 
lina and Georgia long in vie\v. Witness the great preparations made at the 
Havanna, and ;5f. Atign^tine, about three years ago, for a powerful descent on 
these Provinces : and since tliat, in tirrn.' of profound peace also, a i)roclamation 
published at St. .4ngU;tirie, in his Catholic Majesty's name, promising; freedom 
(I lid ot/ier f:iirourr(s:fineiit to alt xiarcs that fhould desert from your Majcslj^'s snb- 
jeetsofthis Province and join them. Inconsequence of which Proclamation, 
many have already deserted, and t>therseticouraged daily to do the same ; and 
even those vhohnve rommilled the most inliii.mnn mnrdcrs arc there harboured, 
e III rrlaine.d and caressed. Such, may it please your Majesty, was the situation 
of this Piovince when Getu'i-al Oglethorpe fipjdied to us to assist your MajeS' 
ty's Forces in attacking St. Augustine. Induced by the assurances we had from 
that G<?neral, and the Commodore of your Majesty's Shijis of War, mi-t toge- 
ther in tiie Harbour of Charleston, of the grent |)robabili(y there was of success, 
and by the advantage, we were sensil)!e would tiieieby accrue to your Ma- 
ji'sty's subjects of this Province and Georgia, and for the Glory of your Majesty's 
arms, in reducing a Fortress which stands an Eye-sore to the Britisli Dominions 
in North America; and as such has been before attempted by this Province, 
but without success, we exerted ourselves and clieartully voted sucli a supply 
of Forces as tliat General thought sutficient to succeed in that expedition ; 
together with a great ijuantity of Provision.^, Artillery, Warlike Stores, Vessels 
for transportation, .Arms and Presents for 500 Indians, and many other neces- 
sarys: But considering the uncertainty of Warlike F.vents, and that the Ene- 
my might be stronger tlian the (jeneral iiad re])resenled tiiem to be, w-e added 
200 men more : Tiie whole expence amounting to a greater sum than our present 
Circumstance could well bear. With this additional reinforcenif nt, we had 
tiie greatest reason to hope for success ; and mdre especially, as to all this, was 
afterwards added, your .Majesty's great supply sent to the General, of Warlike 
Stores proper for such an undertaking. But so it has fallen out. that with heai"ts 
full of sorrow and anxietv, are we now obliged to repi-p-ient to your Majesty, 
that this attempt |)rove(l altogether unsucc"ssful, and the Troops sent from this 
Province, by express orders (iated the -tth instint, trom General OglHthro|ie to 
their Commanding Olhcer, ordered to withdraw from before St Augustine, and 
to carry ofi" or destroy the Cannon made use of by them against (he Eue:iiy. 
Whether the bad succes'^ of this expeililion proceeds fi-om .MisC'Uiduct, or trom 
any other cause, we shall not presume tojinlge. But, may it ph-ase your .Ma- 
jesty, sui;h being the issue and event of this unhappy Exjindilion, in wiiich all 
oin- hopes were ])laced, w<' are now exposed to a pou erlul I'^iiemy, roused with 
resentment, and encouraged by our disappoininieiit, are become more (onui- 
dable tirui ever, and if not speedily pievent(>d by a superior force, may somi 
lin-n their Arms against us. And \vhat a Tiagical scene an nttack from a 
Foreign Enemy must produce, when at the same time our whole force uill be 
srarcc sufficient to gurtw/agw///.?/ Iliat wUhiii .v.s-, is but ion apparent. 

Expo.sed as «■(! are to present danger from the Sp.Miiards, Conse(iuenccs 
more fatal to us, as well as to the whole of yfuu" Maie^ty'.s Dominions in 
America, are to be a|i|in'huided in case of a rupture with France, from Jie 
wonderful Progress made in lhe.se few years by that .Nation in (heir grand and 
iiMig projected sciien.e, of ojiening a communii alion betni-en th'i;- Canada 
and (Quebec ScKlcnn.nl < and those on the great liiver Messi-Mppi to the Bay of 
■Me>;ic<). A Scheme, gre;i( to them, but daugerdiis lo llu; lintiNli Dominions, 
a> lia-. becii iierelolore .-,e( torth by two .severed Pvepresentations nnnle to your 
.Vlajesly from (his rro\iiira; since ihe year 1731. This communication being 
now opened, by that means, they havfi an Army of between 3, iV, ^,0(iO men on 
our backs; and have of late built new F(h(s and Reinforced (hose formerly 
built ; by which there is great reason (o apprtdiend. that they are able not only 
(o pievent the progress and e\(eM(iou of the Krilish Seltltjnents in Aorth 
Arnericn. but ''> in\ ade .some ol w !i!i| is aii'ead) •;e(ilvd. 



t 



73 

As we have heretofore humbly represented to your Majesty, this Province and 
that of Georgia have the most to fear, not only on account of their being the 
weakest andniost exposed to their Knemys, but on account of their situation, 
and the great advantage which the French must consequently have by becom- 
ine Masters of them. The Country between these Colonys and the French 
Settlements and Garrisons on the Rivers Messisip|)i and Moville. being plain, 
flat and opei', not intersected by ihe large Ap[iala(cliian Mountains; we have 
therefore no other Barrier but a few Nations of Indians, far inferior in number 
to theirs. Next to them are the ("hickesaws ; a Bold and Brave People. Strict 
friends to your Majesty's subjects of this Province; but not now in number 
abovp400men; with tliem the French have lately made an insidious peace ; 
And in their security thereu|)on, many of them ha%'e been cut otf by the 
Choctaw Iiulians. 'J'hese Choctaws are very numerous, and under the im- 
mediate influence and direction of the French. This together with the many 
former attacks upon that brave Nation of the Chickesaws, leave no room to 
doul)t of their intention to exterpate Ili»t People, as they have already done 
the Notchces, with a view manifestly to make their next atlempt on the Creek.s 
the only remaining Barrier, in that case, between us and the French. In that 
Nation the French have long had a Fort,' called the Alabama Fort; which they 
have latelv reinforced ; and by repeated intelligence from our Traders, are 
now using" th^ir utmost endeavour.-;, by oftVrs of great Presents as well as 
threats, to witlnlraw our People from our Interest, and (o engage them to 
destroy our Traders now amongst them. In which, were they to succeed, 
terrible must be the fate of these vour Majesty's Provinces of South-Carolina 
and G.^or^ia ; who unless supported must fall a Prey to them and their numerous 
Indians, whose devastations and crueltys this Province has heretofore tataily 
experienced: and they in that case become Masters of what they have had 
long in view, to wit a settlement and Ports on I his Eastern part of the American 
Continent, so absolutely necessary for tlie support and advantage of their back 
Settlements, and of gnat usi; to tlicir Sugar Islands in Am.irica, which at 
present d?i)end almost wholly upon the Englisii Colonys for Lumber and 
Provisions: But as they are now situated have no other opening but trom the 
Rivers Moville and Messrssippi, at the extremity of the Bay Appaiatciiee, in 
the Entrance of the Gulf of Alexiro, which renders tlieir traffic from these 
Colony- not only tedious but dangerous; and then once having secured a 
setllemeot on this shore, and a communication opened to their settlements on 
th.se Rivers; we have reason to apprehend they may become Masters ot all 
Florida and its Coa.sts quite down to these great Rivers, including St Augustine 
itself, if i( remains unconquered by your Majesty, and that large tract ot 
fertile and rich soil called the Appalatchees, formerly conquered by the Inhabi- 
tants of this Province fn.m the Spaniards. Such, May it please your Majesty, 
seems to be the great sclieines of the French, part of which are already executed 
and performed ; and what are to come, we can easily foresee, but are of too 
hii'h an-' extensive a nature for us to ])revent. ... 

ExnprtatioiiPand hopes arising at (iist from the settlement of Georgia being 
now vani-hed and gone by, the drooping and languid condition ot the few 
Inhabitants which still remain there, our own Inhabitants and fortunes greatly 
reduced and impoverished by a long Series of Calamitys and Misfortunes 
heretofore unknown, we have nothing lelt but to fly to your Majesty for pro- 
tection. And full of gratitude for the many favours heretofore conlerred m 
this Province, and confiding in that glorious disposition and spirit so lately 
evidenced and made appear to us by your Majesty in the early care taken ot 
these your remotest subjects in America, by the assistance of so many ot your 
Majesty's Ships of War, the good effects of which we have already, in many 
insia\ices, experienced. » d i i 

We most humbly and earnestly implore your Majesty's most Royal and 
paternal protection and assistance against our Enemys by Land, and particu- 
larly those in St. Augustine; who, no doubt, by our disa[ii)ointinent now bid 
defiance to the power and force of this Province: and from whence we have 
sustained so manv losses and injur vs, bi/ the reccflion from time lo time of our 
ihserttd Slaves, and even of those who have committed Ihe must bnrl)anms and 
cruel Murders of their Masfcrs. And we most humbly pray your Majesty that 
ill case this Fortress should remain unconquered, then in any future Peace to 

10 



• 



74 

be concluded, befwern your M ijesty and tlic King of Spain, provision tnay 
be made for the reslor^tion of our Slaves already deserted, and for our security 
against such Evils for the future, as also for the great expence which has 
attended this Province in consequence thereof. 

All which we most hun.bly and earnestly submit to your Majesty's Roya! 
Consideration." 

In the Upper Hoise of Assembly the 26 day of July 1740 
JOHN FENVVICKE. 

In the Commons House of Assembly the 26 day of July 1740 
By Order of the House 

WILLM. BULL, Junr. Speaker. 



In consequence of these repeated effervescences 
among our slaves, it was found expedient to the' safety 
of the Colony, to circumscribe their privile'ges, and to 
adopt such measures as would prevent' any possibility 
of concert among them. The Negro Act of the year 
1740, (still in the Statute Book, though not actually 
in force) passed with a view of avoiding the dangers 
inseparably connected with the institution of slavery 
among us, was actively and efficiently enforced, and 
all its penalties and provisions carried into full effect. 
The rigid policy of the Act, when faithfully pursued, 
corrected the evil for many years, and, by visiting 
with prompt and exemplary punishment every act 
of insubordination, preserved the tranquility of the 
public mind and quieted all its apprehensions. As 
soon as this security and cowfidence were restored, 
however, a general relaxation in the execution of the 
salutary provisions of the Act took place, and the 
Negroes, progressively, step by step, regained that 
confidence and concert among themselves that always 
follow the absence of j)roper discipline. They reco- 
vered the ground they had lost — re-assumed the 
privileges of which they had been hitherto deprived — 
corresponded more intimately with each other, both 
in their public and private associations — and finalJy 



«r 



75 

projected the plan of another Insurrection, in Cam- 
den and its vicinity. This was, periiaps, plotted with 
more secrecy and ingenuity of design than even 
that of the late intended Insurrection in Charleston ; 
and w^as to have been attended with a correspond- 
ing result. Part of the Town was to have been 
set on fire — all the male white inhabitants indiscrimi- 
nately massacred, and the iemales reserved for a 
destiny still more horrible and revolting. 

We have been unable to procure a copy of the 
minutes of the Town Council of Camden, in rela- 
tion to this event; but we have been obligingly favor- 
ed with the following Narrative, by Francis G. De- 
LiESSELiNE, £sQ. wlio was in Camden at the time. 
Some {aw particulars may have faded in his recol- 
lection, but the important features of the transaction 
are presented with ])erfect accuracy. The memory 
clings with too great a tenacity to these to allow any 
possibility of a want of fidelity. 

" In compliance with your request I send you a Narrative of the pro- 
jected conspiracy of the blacks in Camden, and its neighborhood, 
in the year I8I6 — the professed design of which, was to murder all 
the whites, and free themselves. A long lapse of -tiaie has erased 
from my memory many of the particulars, but I am enabled to give 
you the following outline : 

" About the middle of June, I8I6, Col. Chesnut, a citizen of 
Camden, and an aid-de-camp to Gov. Williams, was informed by 
a favorite and confidential slave, that pro])ositions of a dangerous 
character had been made to him, in relation to a projected insurrection 
among the blacks — and that the time and place of rendezvous had 
been already appointed His master, placing the most unreserved 
confidence in his fidelity, directed him to attend the meetings of the 
conspirators, previous to the developement of the plot, and, at the 
same time, to conduct himself with the most guarded discretion. — 
A communication was immediately had with Governor Williams^ 
and Colonel Chesnut received the necessary instructions with re* 



i 



76 

^ard to the defeat of the conspiracy. These were communicated f 
none otlier than the Town Council ; anci such was the secrecy icith 
which the ichole affair ims conducted, that on the morning of the 
1st or 2nd of July, the young men chosen to arrest the ringleaders 
of the conspiracy were assembled under the pretence of a fox chase, 
and despatched under the command of leaders, who were enjoined to 
the utmost secrecy. They were perfectly ignorant of the natuie of 
the service they were on, until the moment they were ordered to ar- 
rest the conspirators, most of whom were at work in the fields, many 
miles apart. Their movements were so secret and simultaneous, 
that the arrests were made aluiost at the same instant of time, and 
without any intimation on the part of those respectively arrested, of 
the fate of their confederates. The same caution was subsequently 
used, at their trial, to conceal the name of the informer, who was 
likewise in custody. The most satisfactory testimony, independent 
of that of the informer, and regulated by the most rigid rules of 
evidence, sufficiently established their guilt ; and the first gang who 
were executed died ignorant of the informer. They all confessed 
their crimes, and the most intelligent of them acknowledged that 
they had no causes of complaint against their individual masters, and 
advised their surviving brethren of the futility of any further 
attempt. They expressed themselves surprised with the mild and 
humane manner of the proceedings instituted against them, and free- 
ly acknowledged that they had anticipated immediate death in case 
of a discovery. Two brothers engaged in this rebellion could read 
and write, and were hitherto of unexcejitional characters. They 
were religious, and had always been regarded in the light of 
faithful servants. A few appeared to have been actuated 
solely by the instinct of the most brutal licentiousness, and 
by the lust of plunder — but most of them by wild and frantic ideas 
of the rights of man, and the misconceived injunctions and examples 
of Holy lorit. 

" The scheme had for its object the conflagration of a part of the 
town — the massacre of all tlie white male inhabitants, and the more 
brutal sacrifice of the female. Their plan was entrusted to a ievr 
only, and they left its developement and consummation to chance ; 
relying on the presumed disposition to rebellion on the part of the 
blacks of every description. 

" The night of the 4th of July was appointed for the explosion. — 
Great anxiety had been exhibited among the younger and more ar- 



77 

dent associates in the revolt, in the different meetings that were held, t<y 
precipitate the period of attack, and begin the work of desolation and 
slaughter sometime before. But the cautious and calculating judgment 
of the more cunning and elder urged as reasons for deferring it, that there 
was a scarcity of provisions — that the crops not yet made would be 
lost in the confusion that would ensue, and that famine would ac- 
complish what force might not be able to effect. They confidently 
relied, also, upon the usual mdulgences among us on a day celebrated 
as a great national jubilee ; and it was finally determined, that the 
night of the 4th of July should be appointed as the time for the re- 
enaction of the horrors of the Scicilian Vespers. The different 
commands had been regularly assigned 'to particular leaders, and all 
had been allotted, except that of Commander-in-Chief. This was 
reserved for him who should first force the gates of the Arsenal. To 
strengthen the possibility of success, the Negroes from the circum- 
jacent country were invited, under various pretences, to Camden that 
night. The fidelity of a favorite domestic, as I have already stated, 
defeated tlieir flagitious scheme, and consined the ring-leaders of the 
revolt to a premature and ignominious grave. The Legislature of 
the State purchased the freedom of the informer, and settled a 
PENSION upon him for life. 

" Ahhough many were known to have been concerned in the In- 
surrection, none but the chiefs of the revolt were executed. As well 
as I can recollect, the whole number hung was six." 

We have no account in the history of the country 
of any other Insurrection from the year 1816 until 
the present year (1822.) The particulars of this are 
too fresh in the memory of all to need any repetition. 
It was a subject of deep and breathless anxiety, and 
its features are preserved with the most scrupulous 
accuracy in the memory of those who were to have 
been the victims of its diabolical brutality. Thirty- 
five of the detestable miscreants, who were the ring- 
leaders of the meditated rebellion, have expiated 
their crime on the gallows — and have been hung up 
as an awful warning to those who remain. The 



^^r 



78 

humanity of our laws has spared others who were 
implicated in the plot — but driven (hem into perpet- 
ual exile, to suffer death in the event of their return- 
ing to our shores. 

Thus has perished, and thus will forever perish, the 
hopes of all misguided and deluded incendiaries. 
It is utterly impossible for them to affect any revolu- 
tion in the state and condition of society in which 
they stand, nor can all their stratagems avail them in 
such a design. Their treachery, though it walks 
only in the gloom and shadow of midnight, and shows 
its " dark and dangerous brow," at that dead hour, 
so suited to its evil machinations, icill always be detect- 
ed ; nor can the most elaborate ingenuity " hide it 
from prevention." There is no secrecy profound 
enough to conceal such a Heaven-offending sin. 

The utter impracticability of succeeding in any 
roedifated Insurrection on the part of our black 
population is sufficiently demonstrable, we think, 
from the evidence we have collected and pro- 
duced. Their general inferiority in the gifts of 
nature — the imbecility of spirit, necessarily superin- 
duced by their condition — the fidelity and attachnient 
of some — want of confidence among themselves — 
a principle of duty on the part of many, and reason 
among the more reflecting — coupled with other aux- 
illiary causes — will forever bafllc all prospects of 
successful rebellion. The facts and observations 
which follow, strengthen the proposition we have 
discussed, and present a luminous arrangement of 
arguments fully conclusive upon the subject. The 
article at the same lime comprehends, in a condensed 
form, most of the views of which the subject is capa- 
ble of being illustrated. It is iiom the pen of Beaja- 



• 



79 

MiN Elliott, Esq. a gentlemen, well known and 
estimated for his general information, as well as for 
his intimate and accurate knowledge of the partic- 
ular history of our country. We have been greatly 
indebted to him in the prosecution of our design, and 
have frequently drawn our information, upon some 
interesting topics, from the fountain of his own 
memory and reflection. 

TO OUR NORTHERN BRETHREN. 

Fellow Citizens — 

Were we to misjudge you from the vile paragraphs of some of your 
editors, we should almost believe that you would delight to see 
Charleston another Wyoming, and could behold without emotion, 
Virginia and Kentucky smoking like the first Isle of the Antilles. 
We, however, hold no such unworthy opinion of you. It is the lot of 
all countries to produce beings, who, like the depredators in the diseas- 
ed district of the City of New-York, would prosper on the affliction 
of their fellow creatures. But, while we must expect to find charac- 
ters who would foment connnotion to advance themselves, vve should 
be satisfied that the American people are too sound to inculcate 
treachery and justify assassination. It is, therefore, I would suppose, 
that you werenot aware of the deep atrocity of the late machinations 
in our city, or you would declare that we have felt as you would have 
feh, and "in our proceedings have but obeyed the dictates of nature 
and of wisdom. We would, therefore, invite you temperately to 
survey the various circumstances of this event. 

This description of our population had been allowed to assemble 
for religious instruction. — The designing leaders in the scheme of vil- 
lainy, availed themselves of these occasions to instill sentiments of 
krocity,hyfalsifi/ing the Bible. All the severe penal laws of the 
Israelites were quoted to mislead them, and the denunciations in the 
prophecies, whir h were intended to deter men from evil, were declar- 
ed to be divine cominands which they were to execute. To conOrm 
this doctrine, they were told that Heshbon, that Bashan with its sixty 
cities had been destroyed, man, woman and child ; that in the deso- 
lation of Midian, only the males were destroyed, at which Moses was 
displeased, and deliberately ordered the death of the boys and their 
mothers. That Joshua levelled the walls of Jericho, and regarded 
neither age nor sex; and that David vanquished empires and left not 
man, woman or infant alive. Not content with this execrable per- 
vertion— with exhibhing the God of Mercy as another Jaggernaut, 
they were informed of what their color had perpetrated abroad. 
Such was their re/Z^/ort — such the examples to be imitated. 

After having rendered them fiends in principle, they were prepared 
to be fiends in action. A regular plan was formed to annihilate us 



80 

and our abodes ; the arsenals and strong holds were to have been 
seized, and the leaders were nominated for each attack. Besides the 
instruments which many of them possessed as mechanics, villains 
were engaged in nianufacturing arms; several pike-handles were dis- 
covered; Pharoah and Peter had swords; Ned Bennett had a sword 
to kill ivolves, but which he designed first to try upon his master, of 
whom he had received every indulgence. The places of rendezvous, 
the night, the hour were determined — and the imps of rebellion were 
to have made Chasleston one scene of flames and carnage, had they 
been able. It is no diminution of their crime to say they were not 
able; — guilt is in the intention and not in the act. 

'' Under such circumstances of just exaspiration, what did the citi- 
zens of Charleston ? Did they yield to their passions and commit an 
indiscriminate massacre, as would have been done, in many places, 
under less excitement? Nothing like it. A court was organized of 
distinguished integrity, respectability and intelligence ; the members 
of which felt their own high reputation involved with the untarnished 
reputation of their State and Country. So far from being precipitate, 
they were occupied several days in investigating the nature of the con- 
spiracy, before they put the individuals accused upon their trials. — 
The cases of the criminals were conducted with that liberality, 
justice and impartiality, which characterise American jurisprudence, 
which is no where more conspicuous than in South-Carolina, and was 
never more pure than on this painful occasion. Their guilt was de- 
monstrated, and what ought to have been done ? Disregard the law — 
unleash them upon society, and encourage a repitition of their projects? 
No one, 1 hope, in our extensive empire, would intimate such a wish. 
What was done? — That which duty enjoined and precedent justified. 
These culprits meditated against us, fire, pillage, treason, treachery 
to their masters, with outrages not to be named. Thus they blended 
four capital ojfcncts in one crime. Ought not capital punishment 
then to lia\-(; been awarded? It is certainly not unexampled. — In 
the Spanish conspiracy against V^enice, which partakes of the character 
of this, tliree hiinrlred and ffty were put to death. George II. execu- 
Jiftif-fonr oi the first men in Britain for the rebellion of 1745. Nor 
are we without domestic precedent. An insurrection occurred in the 
city of New-York in l7l'-' As soon as the alarm-gun was fired, and 
a detachment of the guards appeared, the insurgents fled to the woods , 
where they were surrounded ; several through desparation shot them- 
selves, the rest wen; raptured, and nineteen executed. 

"Another was meditated in 1741, ivlien there were two thousand 
Negroes and twelve thousand whites in the city of New-York. It 
was then found neressary to iu.trn thirteen mid to hang eighteen ne- 
-Troes with four whites, to tran.sj)ort eighty negroes and five whites. 

Jn New-York. In Charleston. 

Executed, ."5 - - - - i?.') 
TruHHportcd, sr> - - - - '37 



l-'O - - - - 72 






81 

*' Now— a short period before the negro plot was discovered in 
Newt York, an insurrection broke out in Carolina. Many of the 
ring-leaders were shot or hanged, but none punished in amj other 
mode. There can then be no ground to imagine that we ever, under 
the same circumstances, would be more severe than our Northern 
brethren. Every measure essential to our self-protection, will be, 
and, I think , you will not dispute, ought to be adopted. It would, 
therefore, be philanthrophy to impress upon the more intelligent 
portion of this population the wisdom of good conduct. Schemes 
of insurrection, such as the present, cannot succeed. The white 
population of each State alone, is adequate to suppress iJiem. From 
the first settlement of Carolina, we have been accustomed to these 
abortive efforts. Under our Proprietary government, there was a 
notorious out-law by the name of Sebastian ; Governor Gibbs issued 
his proclamation, and the Indians soon entitled themselves to the 
reward. 

" In 1730, a plan was conceived against Charleston. They were 
allowed to assemble, were then taken, and proper examples made. 
Some years afterwards, what we dominate the Gullah war, occurred. 
This was more general — In St. Paul's Parish they appeared in arras ; 
the greater part were killed, and not more than two or three escaped. 
In St. John's Parish they were discovered by Major Cordes' faithful 
driver, Peter, and in Charleston, they were also discovered, suppres- 
sed and punished. The negro law of 1740, was enacted in conse- 
quence of the last, and has proved our security from that period, 
notwithstanding the occasional t?fferve5cences of insubordination. 
The history of South-Carolina, in this particular, has been the history 
of every State in the Union. 

" Another impediment to the progress of conspiracy will ever be 
found in the fidelity of some of our negroes. The servant who is 
false to his master, would be false to his God. One act of perfidy is 
but the first step in the road of corruption and of baseness ; and those 
who on this occasion, have proved ungrateful to their owners, have 
also been hyprocrites in religion. But it is a reputable truth, that 
on every such occasion, servants have been found who were worthy 
the kindness and confidence oi their Masters. 

" Besides, when the moment of trial comes, among large bodies of 
men, some will tremble, some will be shocked at what they are about 
to perpetrate, and others will remember that by disclosure, may be 
obtained more than they seek through perils. Jaffier saved Venice, 
and most conspiracies own men inferior to Jaffier. We must also 
remember that the majority of mankind would avoid dangerous en- 
terprizes. — Therefore f'..e great body of these people would prefer 
safety and quiet with their present comforts, to a hazardous commo- 
tion with an issue so fearful as it always has been, and ever will be. 

" Superadded to these intrinsic securities, we have the proportion 
of two to one in the aggregate population of States situated like our- 
selves. Our sister and neighbor, Tennessee, has four to one, and the 
lieroes of Orleans have but to know that we aie in danger to be with 
Hs ht the first tap of the drum. 
11 



^f 



82 

"The National Government, also can preserve the peace of the 
country. It was established expressly to ensure domestic tranc^iillity 
and suppress insurrection. It has laeen tried, and found efficient. 
The Piesident may summrui upwards o^Jive to one. Tlie old French 
government with three thousand regulars, protected their largest 
colony, and a small military force is found adequate in the British 
West Indies. Surely the American government could, and would do 
as much, were it necessary. A change cannot then be effected by 
force, nor would it be beneficial to jhe United States. Our roads 
would swarm with paupers, and every wood be infested with banditti. 
But, under the existing regulations, they contribute to general wealih, 
and are preserved from want, misery and crime. The States in 
which they are located have been fully as instrumental in originating 
and defending our political independence as those without them; ani 
at every crisis have equally illustrated the valor and power of our 
common country. During the Revolution, we frustrated arid repelled 
the enemy for four years, from 1776 to 'SO; during which period our 
Northern brethren were over-run and under their feet. W'hat nation 
— wXvAi portion of this great nation has surpassed in spleiulor and in 
conduct, the victories of Moultrie and of Jackson ? In civil ta- 
lents — in devotion to the Republic — in the most ennobling sentiments 
of the heart — in charity — in hospitality — when has the South or the 
West been deficient ? Never — you will voluntarily acknowledge. 

"From these observations, then, I trust you will feel that our 
Court have done their duty, and merit the gratitude not only of their 
immediate fellow citizens, but of then- fellow citizens throughout the 
Union. You will also, I think, perceive that the happiness oi this 
population will be'^measured and decided by their own goodcnnJuct, 
and, that to support subordhmtion, is a duty enjoined by philanthro- 
phy, patriotism, aiid the best interests of x-Vmerica. 

" I submit the above facts and observations to my fellow citizens 
generally; and trust that the voice of animadversion will be forever 
hushed, in the universal good feeling of our sister States." 

Although the utter impracticability of effecting any 
permanent change in their coiulition, by an insurrec- 
tion among our Slaves, has been, we think, fully de- 
monstrated, it is nevertheless indispensible to our 
safety to watch all their motions with a careful and 
scrutinising eye — and to pursue such a system of po- 
licy, in relation to them, as will effectually prevent all 
secret combinations among them, hostile to our peace. 
Every possible precaution should be adopted, that is cal- 
cul ted, in the remotest degree, to save us from a catas- 
trophe which at all limes threatens us, and of the horrors 



83 

of which, the imaghiation can form no definite idea. 
The Crisis through which we have so recently and pro- 
videntially passed, had long been anticipated by those 
who were^ minute observers of the passing events of 
the times. A general spirit of insubordination among 
our slaves and free negroes — springing from the relax- 
ation of discipline on the part of the whites — had been 
long discernable — norpje the other auxiliary causes so 
occuh that they cannot be easily pointed out. 

We look upon the existence of our Free Blacks 
among us, as the greatest and most deplorable evil 
w ith which we are unhappily afflicted. They arc, ge- 
nerally speaking, an idle, lazy, insolent set of vagabonds, 
who live by theft or gambling, or other means equal- 
ly vicious and demoralising. And who, from 
their general carriage and insolent behaviour in the 
community, are a perpetual source of irritation to our- 
selves, and a fruitful cause of dissatisfaction to our 
slaves. Our slaves, when they look around them and 
see persons of their oivn color enjoying a comparative 
degree oi' freedom, and assuming privileges beyond 
their own condition, naturally become dissatisfied with 
their lot, until the feverish restlessness of this disposi- 
tion foments itself into insurrection, and the " black 
flood of long-retained spleen" breaks down every prin- 
ciple of duty p.nd obedience. We would respectfully 
recommend to the Legislature, therefore, the expedi- 
ency of removing this evil, and of rooting it out of the 
land. A law, banishing them, male and female, from 
the State, under the penalty of death, or of perpetual 
servitude, upon their return — or placing such a tax 
upon them, as, from its severity, would render it im- 
practicable for them to remain among us — is desirable. 
Either of tiiese modes presents a feasible and <^asy 



84 

method of clearing the country of this detestable caste. 
The example of a sister State* in this latter particular, 
gives us a wholesome lesson of instruction. Our phi- 
lanthrophic brethren at the North and East, will, no 
doubt, afford them an asylum, and ite have every dis- 
position to get rid of them — Under such a dispensation, 
therefore, all parlies might be satisfied. Should the 
necessity of such an expedient appear obvious to the 
Legislature, we ought, in common humanity, to see 
that their departure from our shores should be attend- 
ed with every necessary comfort and convenience. — 
An appropriation of funds, therefore, to meet the exi- 
gencies of such an event, and to provide for those who 
might be incapable of providing for themselves, would 
be necessary. If we are compelled, from our situ ation, 
to pass over some of the more rigid and fundamental 
principles of abstract justice, let the enoroachment be 
made with as little individual distress as possible. 

There are many enlightened and intelligent men 
who are of opinion, that the same measures should be 
adopted in relation to our Free MulAttoes — and that 
they are as serious an affliction, both to the morals and 
security of the State, as the Free Blacks themselves. 
We are, however, of an opinion, directly the reverse, 
and arc decidedly opposed to any system of legislation 
that would end in banishing theyn. They are, in our 
estimation, (but perhaps we have viewed the subject 
in ui improper light) a harrier between our own color 
and that of the black — and, in cases of insurrection, are 
more likely to enlist themselves under the banners of 
the whites. Most of them are industrious, sober, hard- 
working mechanics, who have large families and con- 
siderable property : and as far as we are acquainted 
with their temper, and disposition of their feelings, 

* Georgia. 



85 

abhor the idea of an association with the blacks in any 
enterprise that may have for its object the revolution of 
their condition. It must be recollected also, that the 
greater part of them own slaves themselves, and are, 
therefore, so far interested in this species of property, 
as to keep them on the watch, and induce them to dis- 
close any plans that may be injurious to our peace. — 
Experience justifies this conclusion. The important 
discoveries, in most instances of insurrection, particu- 
larly in the last, have been made through the imme- 
diate instrumentahty and advice of this class. Would 
it be generous then to drive them from the comforts of 
their present situation, and exile them from our shores, 
when we at the same time acknowledge the value of 
the services they have performed ? We think not. — 
But it is for wiser and better heads to determine — We 
feel satisfied that whatever will be done in this respect, 
will be dictated by a sound and wholesome judgment. 
It'^is politic and proper at the same time, however, to 
preserve such a system of discipline in relation to 
them as w ill effectually mark their distinctive condi- 
tion in society, and regulate their degree, when placed 
in opposition to that of our own. If this principle of 
prudent Legislation be once lost sight of, the barriers 
between us must necessarily become nothing more 
than a mere rope of sand. 

" Take but dkgeee — away uuUnie that siring, 

And, hark, what discord follows, eacli thing meets 

In mere oppugnancy. Siiakspeark. 

We had projected a further discussion of several 
other topics intimately connected with our present 
design, but the length to which our remarks 
have already been extended, renders it impracticable 
at present. We may, perhaps, at some future period, 



/ 



86 

not far distant, renew our speculations, and gather 
from other authorities than those we have already 
used, additional evidences of the propriety of the 
views we have taken. The subject is so vitally im- 
portant that it cannot be too often agitated or discus- 
sed. Every one who has a home amongst us — and 
more particularly those whose happiness is ren- 
dered still more felicitious by the endearing con- 
nexions that spring from the relations of domestic 
life— ^who have wives that look up to them for protec- 
tion — and children who cling to them for safety and 
security — feel that it is one tliat visits their hearts with 
the utmost intensity of interest — There are no pulses 
in such bosoms that palpitate with more active viva- 
city — We ought not to circumscribe our prospects 
to the present, or limit it to the contracted period 
when the hour-glasses of our own existence run out. 
Our thoughts should be more expanded — We ought to 
legislate for our children — we ought to legislate for 
POSTERITY. Let it never be forgotten, that " our Ne- 
'"[ (jRoi!^ are ti'uely the Jacobins of the country; that 
they are the anarchisis and the domestic enemy ; the 
common enemy of civilized society, and the barbarians 

.,Vvh0 would, IF THEY COULD, bcCOme the DESTROYERS 

of our race.^^ 



FIMS. 



ERRATA. 



\* The rapidity with which the foregoing pages have been put to press, 
obliges us to reijuest the reader to correct a few Errata that have beea 
unavoidably overlooked. 

Page 10 line IS for "probabity'" read "probability." 
"principle" •• '^principal." 
" extensive" • • " exclusive." 
"tho" . "the." 

"concerning" •• "censuring." 
" althougk is not fixed by law" read " although 

it is not fixed by law." 
" the of justice" read " of the justice." 
'^siu genus" •• '^ sui generis." 

'■'■ acutes ensens" •• " acute senses." 
" affect" . . « effect." 

"ofichick" •• "intvhich" 






15 

2 J 
24 
32 
53 

57 
67 

68 

78 
78 



23 
15 

21 
26 
18 

34 

2() 

1 

6 

33 



4 



■A 
'It 



